fidence nor disregard her instructions. But there's one
thing I can do, one thing I can tell you, because it's my confidence,
not hers."

The very obvious fact that her confidences were not of great moment to
him, the way he sat there beside her in a glum abstraction through the
rather long silence that followed her preface, made it easier for her to
go on.

"You see," she said at last, "I'd always regarded Rose as a spoiled
child. I'd loved her a lot, of course; but I'd despised her a little. At
least I'd tried to, because I was jealous of her; of the big simple easy
way she had--of making people love her. All the hard things came to me,
I felt, and all the easy ones to her. And on the day I came to tell her
about mother, and how we had to move out here--well, I was feeling
sorrier for myself than usual. If you'll remember when that was and what
her condition was (I didn't know about it then and neither did she)
you'll understand my having found her terribly blue and unhappy. She
talked discontentedly about her--failure with you and how she seemed to
be nothing to you except ... Well, she said she envied me. And that, as
I was feeling just then, was too much for me. I lashed out at her; told
her a lot of things she'd never known--about how we'd lived, and so on;
things I'd done for her. I said she'd got my life to live as well as her
own, and that if she failed with it I'd never forgive her. She made me a
promise that she wouldn't, no matter how hard she had to fight for it."

"She spoke to me once of a promise," Rodney said dully, "but of course I
didn't know what she meant."

Portia got to her feet. "I can't leave mother for very long," she said,
"and I've some little errands at the shops before I can go back. So ..."

"I see," he said. "I mustn't detain you any longer. I don't know,
anyhow, that there's anything more to say."

"I'm sorry I can't--help you. You're entitled to--hate me, I think.
Because it all goes back to that. I've been glad of a chance to tell
you. And that makes me all the sorrier that I can't in any way make it
up to you. But you see--don't you--how it is?"

"Yes," he said. "I see. I suppose, if it came to hating, that you're
entitled to hate me. But there'll be no great satisfaction in that, I
guess, for either of us." He held out his hand to her and with a painful
sort of shy stiffness, she grasped it. "If Rose changes her
instructions, or if you change your mind as to your duty under th