ng wretched. But Portia would sit there, slim and erect, in a
little straight-backed chair, and whatever perfunctory commiseration she
might manage to express, the look of her fine eyebrows would be
skeptical. Justly, too. Rose could never deny that. Not so long as she
could remember the innumerable times when she had yielded to her
mother's persuasions that she was over-tired and that a morning in bed
was just what she needed. Portia, so far as she could remember, had
never been the subject of these persuasions.

But this was only the beginning of Rose's troubles to-day. She was
paying the price of yesterday's exaltation and her spirits had sunk down
to nowhere. What a fool's paradise yesterday had been with its vision of
her big self-sufficient husband coming to her for mothering because he
had lost a law-suit! What a piece of mordant irony it was, that she
should have found herself, after all her silly hopes, sobbing in his
arms, while he comforted her for her bitter disappointment over not
being able to comfort him! She had told the truth when she said he was
the one, really, who didn't know how funny it was.

Well, and wasn't her other effort just as ridiculous? If ever he found
her heap of law-books and learned of the wretched hours she had spent
trying to discover what they were all about in the hope of promoting
herself to a true intellectual companionship with him, wouldn't he take
the discovery in exactly the same way--be touched by the childish
futility of it and yet amused at the same time--cuddle her indulgently
in his arms and soothe her disappointment;--and then urge her to look at
the funny side of it? He must know hundreds of practising lawyers. Were
there a dozen out of them all whose minds had the power to stimulate and
bring into action the full powers of his own?

Well then, what was the use of trying? If James Randolph was right--and
it seemed absurd to question it--she had just one charm for her
husband--the charm of sex. To that she owed her hours of simulated
companionship with him, his tenderness for her, his willingness to make
her pleasures his own. To that she owed the extravagantly pretty clothes
he was always urging her to buy--the house he kept her in--the servants
he paid to wait on her. Well then, why not make the best of it?

Only, if she went on much longer, feeling sick and faded like this,
she'd have nothing left to make the most of, and then where would she
be?

Oh, she was ge