r have left Henry
Stanton. She couldn't, evidently, understand why Rose mightn't have done
her wifely duty and been content with that. She felt it incumbent on
women to demonstrate to men that the new liberties they sought would
not, when granted, lead them to disregard the ties that were the
essential foundations of Christian society. But Rose belonged to the new
generation--a generation that confronted, no doubt, new problems, and
would have to solve them for itself.

This suited Rose well enough. What she wanted from her mother, anyway,
was just the old look of love and trust and confidence. And she got that
abundantly.

The thing she wanted from Portia she didn't get. As long as any one else
was by--her mother, or Miss French in charge of the twins--she and
Portia chatted easily, on the best of terms. But, left alone with
her--as it seemed to Rose she actually took pains not to be--Portia's
manner took on that old ironic aloofness that had always silenced her
when she was a girl. She made at last a resolute effort to break
through.

"One of the things I came out for," she said, "was to talk to you--talk
it all out with you. I want to know what sort of job you think I've made
of it."

"You've evidently made a good job of the costume business," said Portia.
"I read that little article about you in _Vanity_ about a month ago.
That didn't seem to leave much doubt as to who's who."

"I don't mean that," said Rose. "I mean what sort of job of it
altogether; of the--of the life that's yours as well as mine."

She stopped there and waited, but all the assent she got from Portia was
that she forbore to change the subject. They were sitting in the study
which her mother had just abandoned for her afternoon nap, and Portia
had busied herself sorting over the litter of papers her mother's
activities always left.

"I want to tell you all about it," Rose said. "I'd like to tell you
every smallest thing about it, if it were possible, so that you
could--remember it as I do."

She tried to do this; to give her sister--not a narrative (her letters,
after all, had put Portia in possession of the outlines of the
story)--but at least an interpretation of it that would go to the
bottom; things she couldn't write in her letters, the actuating desires
and hopes that lay behind the things she'd done. But the attempt
collapsed. She was talking in a vacuum. Her phrases grew more disjointed
until she felt that they were meaningless.