"I can't realize it at all," Rose went on after a little silence. "It doesn't seem--possible. Do you believe the specialist is right? They're always making mistakes, aren't they--condemning people like that, when the trouble isn't what they say? Can't we go to some one else and make sure?" "What's the use?" said Portia. "Suppose we did find a man who said it probably wasn't so serious as that, and that she could probably live all right here? We shouldn't know that he was right--wouldn't dare trust to that. Besides, if I drag mother around to any more of them, she'll know." Rose looked up sharply. "Doesn't she know?" "No," said Portia in that hard even voice of hers. "I lied to her of course. I told her the doctor said her condition was very serious, and that the only way to keep from being a hopeless invalid would be to do what he said--go out to California--take an absolute rest for two or three years--no lectures, no writing, no going about. "You know mother well enough to know what she'd do if she knew the truth about it. She'd say, 'If I can never be well, what's the use of prolonging my life a year, or two, or five; not really living, just crawling around half alive and soaking up somebody else's life at the same time?' She'd say she didn't believe it was so bad as that anyway, but that whether it was or not, she'd go straight along and live as she's always done, and when she died, she'd be dead. Don't you know how it's always pleased her when old people could die--'in harness,' as she says?" Her voice softened a little as she concluded and the tenseness of her attitude, there at the window, relaxed. The ordeal, or the worst of it, was over; what she had meant to say was said, and what she had meant not to say, if hinted at once or twice, had not caught Rose's ear. She turned for the first time to look at her. Rose was drooping forlornly forward, one arm clasped around her knees, and she was trying to dry her tears on the sleeve of her nightgown. The childlike pathos of the attitude caught Portia like the surge of a wave. She crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. She'd have come still closer and taken the girl in her arms but for the fear of starting her crying again. "Yes," Rose said. "That's mother. And I guess she's right about it. It must be horrible to be half alive;--to know you're no use and never will be. Only I don't believe it will be that way with her. I believe you told her the truth without knowing it. It's just a feeling, but I'm sure of it. She'll get strong and well again out there. You'll think so, too, when you get rested up a little.--You're so frightfully tired, poor dear. It makes me sick to think what a week you've had. And that you've gone through it all alone;--without ever giving Rodney and me a chance to help. I don't see why you did that, Portia."