Her voice got a little harder and cooler. "Mother'll never be well,
Rose. She's got an incurable disease. There's a long name for it
that I can't remember. What it means is that her heart is getting
flabby--degenerating, he called it. He says we can't do anything except
to retard the progress of the disease. It may go fast, or it may go
slowly. That attack she had was just a symptom, he said. She'll have
others. And by and by, of course, a fatal one."

Still she didn't look around from the window. She knew Rose was crying.
She had heard the gasp and choke that followed her first announcement of
the news, and since then, irregularly, a muffled sound of sobbing. She
wanted to go over and comfort the young stricken thing there on the bed,
but she couldn't. She could feel nothing but a dull irresistible anger
that Rose should have the easy relief of tears, which had been denied
her. Because Portia couldn't cry.

"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."