done. She had been writing her mother a letter a week ever
since the departure to California--letters naturally full of domestic
details that simply couldn't be kept up. The only possible deception
would be a compromise with the truth and compromises of that sort are
apt to be pretty unsatisfactory. They suggest concealments in every
phase, and to an imaginative mind, are more terrifying, nine times in
ten, than the truth you're trying to soften. Then, too, the story given
out to Rodney's friends being that Rose was in California with her
mother and Portia, left the chance always open for some contretemps
which would lead to her mother's discovering the truth in a surprising
and shocking way.

But the truth itself, confidently stated, not as a tragic ending, but
as the splendid hopeful beginning of a life of truer happiness for Rose
and her husband, needn't be a shock. So this was what Rose had borne
down on in her letter to Portia. It wasn't a very long letter,
considering how much it had to tell.

"... I have found the big thing couldn't be had without a fight,"
she wrote. "You shouldn't be surprised, because you've probably
found out for yourself that nothing worth having comes very easily.
But you're not to worry about me, nor be afraid for me, because I'm
going to win. I'm making the fight, somehow, for you as well as for
myself. I want you to know that. I think that realizing I was
living your life as well as mine, is what has given me the courage
to start....

"I've got some plans, but I'm not going to tell you what they are.
But I'll write to you every week and tell you what I've done and I
want you to write to Rodney. I want to be sure that you understand
this: Rodney isn't to blame for what's happened. I don't feel that
I am, either, exactly. We're just in a situation that there's only
one real way out of. I don't know whether he sees that yet or not.
He's too terribly hurt and bewildered. But we haven't quarreled,
and I believe we're further in love with each other than we've ever
been before. I know I am with him....

"Break this thing to mother as gently as you like, but tell her
everything before you stop...."

This letter written and despatched, she had worked out the details of
her departure with a good deal of care. In her own house, before her
servants, she had tried to act--and she felt satisfied that h