“I told you how it was, dear, when you first asked me to marry you,” she said, with infinite patience.  “I told you that it wasn’t fair to ask you to take mother, but that I couldn’t possibly leave her alone in her old age.  Jane’s home is wretchedly unhappy—­she can never tell when Charley is to be counted on—­and it would kill mother to be dependent on Charley even if he were willing.  I see your side, George, indeed, indeed, I do, but I can’t—­I simply can’t act differently.  I have always known it was my duty to look after mother—­nothing can change that, not even love.  She worked for us while we were little, and it is trouble that has made her what she is to-day.  You must see that I am right, George; you can’t possibly help it.”

But he couldn’t see it.  If the truth had been twice as evident, if Gabriella had been twice as reasonable, he could still have seen only his wishes.

“I am only asking you to do what is best for us both, Gabriella.”

“But how can it be best for me to become an ungrateful child, George?”

Neither of them wanted to quarrel, yet in a minute the barbed words were flying between them; in a minute they faced each other as coldly as if they had been strangers instead of adoring lovers.  At the last, he looked at her an instant in silence while she sat perfectly motionless with her deep eyes changing to gold in the sunlight; then, turning on his heel, without a word, he left the house, and walked rapidly over the coloured leaves on the pavement.  As he passed under the poplar tree the gray squirrel darted gaily along a bough over his head, but he did not look up, and a minute later Gabriella saw him cross the street and vanish beyond the pointed yew tree in the yard at the corner.

“I wonder if this is the end?” she thought bitterly, and she knew that even if it were the end, that even if she died of it, she could never give way.  Something stronger than herself—­that vein of iron in her soul—­would not bend, would not break though every fibre of her being struggled against it.  All the happiness of her life vanished with George as he passed beyond the yew tree at the corner, yet she sat there with her hands still folded, her lips still firm, watching the tree long after its pointed dusk had hidden her lover’s figure.  Had she followed her desire as lightly as George followed his, she would have run after him as he disappeared, and bringing him back to the room he had left, dissolved in tears on his breast.  She longed to do this, but the vein of iron held her firm in spite of herself.  She could not move toward him, she could not even have put out her hand had he entered.

The bell rang, and her blood drummed in her ears; but it was only Cousin Jimmy bringing Mrs. Carr back from the cemetery.  Hearty, deep-chested, meticulously brushed and groomed, he wore his Sunday frock with an unnatural stiffness, as if he were still hearing Pussy’s parting warning to be “careful about his clothes.”  His dark hair, trained for twenty years from a side parting, shone with the lustre of satin, and his shining eyes, so like the eyes of adventurous youth, wore their accustomed Sabbath look of veiled and ashamed sleepiness.