"Thank you," said Rose. "I just wanted to know." She shut her eyes and pretended to go to sleep. But she didn't. It was true then. Her miracle, it seemed somehow, had gone ludicrously awry. CHAPTER XIV THE DAM GIVES WAY She began getting her strength back very fast after the next two or three days, but this queer kink in her emotions didn't straighten out. She came to see that it was absurd--monstrous almost, but that didn't help. Instead of a baby, she had given birth to two. They were hers of course, as much as one would have been. Only, her soul, which had been waiting so ecstatically for its miracle--for the child which, by making her a mother, should supply what her life needed--her soul wouldn't--couldn't accept the substitution. Those two droll, thin voiced, squirming little mites that were exhibited to her every morning, were as foreign to her, as detached from her, as if they had been brought into the house in a basket. There was a certain basis of reason back of this. At some time, during those early hours of misty half-consciousness, it had been decided that two children would be too much for her to attempt to nurse. She had a notion that this idea hadn't originated with the doctor, though it was he who had stated it to her with the most plausible firmness. Rodney had backed the doctor up, firmly, too. Rose was only a girl in years--why, just a child herself; hadn't had her twenty-second birthday yet; the labor had been long, she was very weak, the children were big and vigorous, and she couldn't hope to supply them both for more than a very few weeks, anyway. And, at this time of year, as the doctor said, there was no difficulty to be apprehended from bottle feeding. It would be better on all accounts. Still, it didn't sound exactly like Roddy's idea either. When Harriet came in for the first time to see her, Rose knew. Harriet was living here now, running the house for Rodney, while Rose was laid up. Doing it beautifully well, too, through all the confusion of nurses and all. Not the slightest jar or creak of their complex domestic machinery ever reached Rose in the big chamber where she lay. Harriet said: "I think you're in great luck to have had two at once; get your duty to posterity done that much sooner. And, of course, you couldn't possibly be expected to nurse two great creatures like that." Rose acquiesced. What was the use of struggling against so formidable a unanimity? She would have struggled though, she knew, but for that queer trick Fate had played her. Her heart ached, as did her breasts. But that was for the lips of the baby--the baby she hadn't had!