She'd never thought of them like that before. The baby she had looked forward to--the baby she hadn't had--had never been thought of that way either. It was to be something to provide her, Rose, with an occupation; to enable her to interpret her life in new terms; to make an alchemic change in the very substance of it. The transmutation hadn't taken place. She surmised now, dimly, that she hadn't deserved it should. "You've never had a mother at all, you poor little mites," she said. "But you're going to have one some day. You're going to be able to come to her with your troubles, because she'll have had troubles herself. She'll help you bear your hurts, because she's had hurts of her own. And she'll be able to teach you to stand the gaff, because she's stood it herself." For the first time since they were born, she was thinking of their need of her rather than of her need of them and with that thought, came for the first time, the surge of passionate maternal love that she had waited for, so long in vain. There was, suddenly, an intolerable ache in her heart that could only have been satisfied by crushing them up against her breast; kissing their hands--their feet. Rose stood there quivering, giddy with the force of it. "Oh, you darlings!" she said. "But wait--wait until I deserve it!" And without touching them at all, she went to the door and opened it. Mrs. Ruston and Doris were both waiting in the hall. "I must go now," she said. "Good-by. Keep them carefully for me." Her voice was steady, and though her eyes were bright, there was no trace of tears upon her cheeks. But there was a kind of glory shining in her face that was too much for Doris, who turned away and sobbed loudly. Even Mrs. Ruston's eyes were wet. "Good-by," said Rose again, and went down composedly enough to her car. She rode down to the station, shook hands with and said good-by to Otto, the chauffeur, allowed the porter to carry her bag into the waiting-room. There she tipped the porter, picked up the bag herself, and walked out the other door; crossed over to Clark Street and took a street-car. At Chicago Avenue she got off and walked north, keeping her eye open for placards advertising rooms to let. It was at the end of about a half mile that she found the hatchet-faced landlady, paid her three dollars, and locked her door, as a symbol, perhaps, of the bigger heavier door that she had swung to and locked on the whole of her past life.