“He said,” she went on, “that the first thing to do was to get her away from here.  He said that in this climate, living as she has been doing, she’d hardly last six months.  But he said that in a bland climate like Southern California, in a bungalow without any stairs in it, if she’s carefully watched all the time to prevent excitement or over-exertion, she might live a good many years.

“So that’s what we’re going to do.  I’ve written the Fletchers to look out a place for us—­some quiet little place that won’t cost too much, and I’ve sold out my business.  I thought I’d get that done before I talked to you about it.  I’ll give the house here to the agent to sell or rent, and as soon as we hear from the Fletchers, we’ll begin to pack.  Within a week, I hope.”

Rose said a queer thing then.  She cried out incredulously, “And you and mother are going away to California to live!  And leave me here all alone!”

“All alone with the whole of your own life,” thought Portia, but didn’t say it.

“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.