Portia wanted to know about all the others:  that pretty Williamson woman, and a few more whose names she remembered.

Rose told her; showed a feverish interest in the rather indifferent topic just to bury the memory of the one that had failed so dismally.  She described a dinner or two she had been to since her return, and told of the little triumph that had been made for her on the occasion of the Chicago opening of Come On In.  Everybody had been there and the Crawfords had given a supper dance for her at the Blackstone afterward.  And driving in the last nail, she told of the feeble little witticism old Mrs. Crawford had made apropos of her return—­a remark whose tinge of malice was so mild that it was felt by all to constitute an official sanction of her social rehabilitation.

Portia honestly enjoyed all that, but Rose went back to the hotel feeling pretty blue. (They were stopping at the hotel.  The twins alone, to say nothing of Miss French and herself, would have been too much for the modest confines of the bungalow.) She wished she could have a good long talk, to-night, with Rodney.

She had a sense of somebody, away up above all mundane affairs—­not responsible for them, perhaps, but capable, at all events, of thoroughly taking them in—­smiling at them all with a sort of ferocious cynicism.  In the foreground of this impression were the good friends—­the really good friends she had just been telling Portia about, who had taken her back with so warm a welcome—­because she’d succeeded; got away with it!

It was with a deeper feeling of melancholy that she thought of Portia and her mother.  Portia, who had fought so gallantly and deserved so much, thwarted, withered, huddling her ashes around her so that her coal of fire might never be fanned into flame again.  Her mother, living gently in the afterglow of an outworn gospel.  Must every one come to an end like that when some initial store of energy was spent?  Begin walling himself in against life?  Stuffing new experiences into pigeonholes, unscrutinized?  Would the time come when little Portia would have to begin treating her with the same tender-patronage that Rose felt now for her mother?  Would little Portia, some day, smile over her like that, and wonder whether she’d ever—­really lived?

She did wish she could have a talk with Rodney.

The telephone switchboard in the lobby gave her an idea.  It was five o’clock, now; seven in Chicago.  He’d just be sitting down to dinner, all by himself, poor dear, most likely, and wishing for a talk with her.  Well, why not?

She rather electrified the hotel office when she put in that call.  The whole place wore an important air for the next half-hour.  She went up to her room to wait for it, and before the line was put through she thought of something that would have prevented her doing it if she’d thought in time.  He’d probably think something horrible had happened to one of them.  So the moment she heard his voice—­it was faint and far-away but clear enough that she could detect the straining urgency of it—­she said: