way--at least I couldn't make up my mind to make them--so
you went to the university. I paid for that, and I paid for your
trousseau, and then I was through."

Rose was trembling, but she didn't flinch. "Wh--what was it," she asked
quietly, "what was it that might have been different and wasn't? Was
it--was it somebody you wanted to marry--that you gave up so I could
have my chance?"

Portia's hard little laugh cut like a knife. "I ought to believe that,"
she said. "I've told myself so enough times. But it's not true. I wonder
why you should have thought of that--why it occurred to you that a
cold-blooded fish like me should want to marry?"

Rose didn't try to answer. She waited.

"You have always thought me cold," Portia said. "So has mother. I'm not,
really. I'm--the other way. I don't believe there ever was a girl that
wanted love and marriage more than I. But I didn't attract anybody. I
was working pretty hard, of course, and that left me too tired to go out
and play--left me a little cross and acid most of the time. But I don't
believe that was the whole reason. It wouldn't have worked out that way
with you. But nobody ever saw me at all. The men I was introduced to
forgot me--were polite to me--got away as soon as they could. They were
always craning around for a look at somebody else. The few men--the two
or three who weren't like that, weren't good enough. But a man did want
me to marry him at last, and for a while I thought I would. Just--just
for the sake of marrying somebody. He wasn't much, but he was some one.
But I knew I'd come to hate him for not being some one else and I
couldn't make up my mind to it. So I took you on instead.

"I stopped hoping, you see, and tried to forget all about it--tried to
crowd it out of my life. I said I'd make my work a substitute for it.
And, in a way, I succeeded. The work opened up and got more interesting
as it got bigger. It wasn't just selling four-dollar candlesticks and
crickets and blue glass flower-holders. I was beginning to get real jobs
to do--big jobs for big people, and it was exciting. That made it easier
to forget. I was beginning to think that some day I'd earn my way into
the open big sort of life that your new friends have had for nothing.

"And then, a week ago, there came the doctor and cut off that chance.
Oh, there's no way out, I know that! That's the way the pattern was cut,
I suppose, in the beginning. I've always suspected the cosmic Dressmak