“You seem so hard, Gabriella,” said Mrs. Fowler.  “Is it because you are young?  Young people never make allowances.”

The taste of bitterness rose to Gabriella’s lips.

“I suppose I am hard,” she answered, “and I am going to stay so.  There is safety in hardness.”

Remembering Jane, remembering the hereditary weakness of the Carrs, who had all married badly, she told herself that in hardness lay her solitary refuge from despair.  After all, it was better to be hard than to break.

“You can’t judge George quite as you would other men,” began George’s mother, and she was aware after a minute that the maternal instinct had in this instance led her to defeat.

“I am not judging other men,” replied George’s wife coldly; “I am judging George.”  Against men as men she had never even thought of cherishing a grievance.  All her life she had looked to some man as to the saviour of the family fortunes, and her vision was still true enough to perceive that, as a human being, Archibald Fowler was finer and bigger than his wife, that Billy was finer and bigger than Patty.  She had found men less the servants of mere instinct than she had found women, less the passive and unresisting vehicles of the elemental impulses.  Then, too, they were so seldom the victims of life, and there was in her nature a fierce contempt for a victim.  She despised people who submitted to circumstances, who resigned themselves to necessity, as if resignation were a virtue instead of a vice.

“Well, you must try not to worry, dear; worry is so bad for you.  I am so sorry it happened.  You won’t mind my speaking to George, will you?”

Gabriella shook her head.  “I don’t care what you say to him.”

“Do you feel able to come down to lunch?”

“Oh, yes, perfectly.  I am simply dying for a cup of tea, and afterwards I think I’ll go out for a walk.  One gets so stuffy and dull when one stays in the house.”

Her manner had changed as if by magic.  In putting the thought of George out of her mind she seemed to have put aside her resentment and despondency.

In the evening George came home, looking a little yellow, with a box of gardenias in his hand; but the scent of the flowers sickened Gabriella, and she put them out of the room while she dressed for dinner.  The attention, instead of pleasing her, brought an ironic twist to her lips, though she thanked George quite as courteously as if he had been a stranger to her.  At dinner when Mr. Fowler abruptly asked his son why he had not been to the office, she kept her eyes fixed on her plate, in which she seemed to see palely reflected the anxious pleasantness of her mother-in-law’s smile.  It hardly occurred to her to wonder where George had spent his day, though, when she met Mr. Fowler’s kind and tired look, a pang shot through her heart.  She was sorrier for George’s father than she was for herself.  He looked so lonely, yet so patient.  He so obviously