At the crucial moment instinct had risen superior to reason, and she had chosen, not with her judgment, but with every quivering nerve and fibre of her being.
Gabriella was right, but George was her son; and had it been possible to secure George's happiness by sacrificing the right to the wrong, she would have made that sacrifice without hesitation, without scruple, and without regret.
"There's his father now," she whispered, lifting her disfigured face.
"Oh, Gabriella, I believe it will kill me!" While Gabriella stood there waiting for George's father to enter, and listening to his slow, deliberate tread on the stairs, the heavy, laborious tread of a man who is uncertain of his strength, she remembered vividly, as if she were living it over again, the night she had waited by her fire to tell George that his first child was to be born.

Many thoughts passed through her mind, and at last these thoughts resolved themselves into a multitude of crowding images--all distinct and vivid images of George's face.

She saw his face as she had first seen and loved it, with its rich colouring, its blue-gray eyes, like wells of romance she had once thought, its look of poetry and emotion which had covered so much that was merely commonplace and gross.

She saw him as he had looked at their marriage, as he had looked, bending over her after her first child was born, and then she saw him as he had parted from her that morning--flushed, sneering, a little coarsened, but still boyish, still charming.

Well, it was all over now.