like Rodney Aldrich wouldn't plead and protest, mother. He wouldn't
_want_ me unless I wanted him just as much."

It was a long time before her mother spoke and when she did, she spoke
humbly--resignedly, as if admitting that the situation she was
confronted with was beyond her powers.

"It's the one need of a woman's life, Rose, dear," she said, "--the
corner-stone of all her happiness, that her husband, as you say, 'wants'
her. It's something that--not in words, of course, but in all the little
facts of married life--she'll need to be reassured about every day.
Doubt of it is the one thing that will have the power to make her
bitterly unhappy. That's why it seems to me so terribly necessary that
she be sure about it before it's too late."

"Yes, of course," said Rose. "But that's true of the man, too, isn't it?
Otherwise, where's the equality?"

Her mother couldn't answer that except with a long sigh.

Strangely enough, it wasn't until after Rose had gone away, and she had
shut herself up in her room to think, that any other aspect of the
situation occurred to her--even that there was another aspect of it
which she'd naturally have expected to be the first and only critical
one.

Ever since babyhood Rose had been devoted, by all her mother's plans and
hopes, to the furtherance of the cause of Woman, whose ardent champion
she herself had always been. For Rose--not Portia--was the devoted one.