But Rose had a special incentive. She wanted to talk to Portia. They
hadn't had a real talk since that devastating day--ages ago--when,
yielding to an impulse of passionate self-revelation, Portia had
exhibited her great sacrifice and her equally great, though thwarted
desire; had said to Rose, "I am the branch they cut off so that you
could grow. You're living my life as well as yours. The only thing I
ever could hate you for would be for failing." She wanted to tell Portia
how the life she had given up the chance of living had grown in her
sister's trust. She wanted Portia's, "Well done."

Also, as a practical matter of justice, she wanted to repay, as far as
money could repay--what Portia, at such a cost, had given her. It was a
project that had often been in her thoughts; at first, just as a dream,
latterly, as a realizable hope.

Considered just as a visit to her mother and sister, the journey to
California was a success. Her mother, especially, got a vast
satisfaction out of the twins, and Rose herself an equal satisfaction
out of seeing how happy and content she was.

She was writing a book--a sort of autobiography. Not that her life, as
she modestly said, was worth writing about, but that the progress of the
Cause she had devoted her life to could hardly be illustrated in a
better way than with an account of that life; of the ideas she had found
current in her girlhood; of the long struggle by means of which those
ideas had become modified; and, last and most important, of the danger
lest, now that the old fixed ideas had become fluid, they should flow in
the wrong direction. Portia was acting as her amanuensis--faithful,
competent, devoted, and just as of old--or perhaps more so, Rose
couldn't be sure--ironic; a little acrid.

Mrs. Stanton's attitude toward Rose's own adventure perplexed and amused
her a little. She'd half expected to be embarrassed with approbation.
She was prepared to deprecate a little the idea that by the example of
her revolt and her attained independence she had done a service to the
great Cause. She didn't feel at all sure that she had; couldn't believe
that she and Rodney, with all their struggles, had settled anything;
and she had hesitated as to how far she could convey that doubt to her
mother.

But she might have spared her pains. Mrs. Stanton's attitude, while it
fell short of "the less said the better," was one, at least, of
suspended judgment. She couldn't, conceivably, eve