Also, as a practical matter of justice, she wanted to repay, as far as money could repay—­what Portia, at such a cost, had given her.  It was a project that had often been in her thoughts; at first, just as a dream, latterly, as a realizable hope.

Considered just as a visit to her mother and sister, the journey to California was a success.  Her mother, especially, got a vast satisfaction out of the twins, and Rose herself an equal satisfaction out of seeing how happy and content she was.

She was writing a book—­a sort of autobiography.  Not that her life, as she modestly said, was worth writing about, but that the progress of the Cause she had devoted her life to could hardly be illustrated in a better way than with an account of that life; of the ideas she had found current in her girlhood; of the long struggle by means of which those ideas had become modified; and, last and most important, of the danger lest, now that the old fixed ideas had become fluid, they should flow in the wrong direction.  Portia was acting as her amanuensis—­faithful, competent, devoted, and just as of old—­or perhaps more so, Rose couldn’t be sure—­ironic; a little acrid.

Mrs. Stanton’s attitude toward Rose’s own adventure perplexed and amused her a little.  She’d half expected to be embarrassed with approbation.  She was prepared to deprecate a little the idea that by the example of her revolt and her attained independence she had done a service to the great Cause.  She didn’t feel at all sure that she had; couldn’t believe that she and Rodney, with all their struggles, had settled anything; and she had hesitated as to how far she could convey that doubt to her mother.

But she might have spared her pains.  Mrs. Stanton’s attitude, while it fell short of “the less said the better,” was one, at least, of suspended judgment.  She couldn’t, conceivably, ever have left Henry Stanton.  She couldn’t, evidently, understand why Rose mightn’t have done her wifely duty and been content with that.  She felt it incumbent on women to demonstrate to men that the new liberties they sought would not, when granted, lead them to disregard the ties that were the essential foundations of Christian society.  But Rose belonged to the new generation—­a generation that confronted, no doubt, new problems, and would have to solve them for itself.

This suited Rose well enough.  What she wanted from her mother, anyway, was just the old look of love and trust and confidence.  And she got that abundantly.

The thing she wanted from Portia she didn’t get.  As long as any one else was by—­her mother, or Miss French in charge of the twins—­she and Portia chatted easily, on the best of terms.  But, left alone with her—­as it seemed to Rose she actually took pains not to be—­Portia’s manner took on that old ironic aloofness that had always silenced her when she was a girl.  She made at last a resolute effort to break through.