ma. The amusements of
men seemed to her futile things, just then, and childish.

"Benoix has given us the go-by, too. Won't touch a card or drink a drop
nowadays. I don't know what's come over him. Good gad--" Kildare gave
himself an impatient shake,--"sometimes I think the little Frenchman's a
female in disguise!"

Kate smiled again. She knew very well what had come over Jacques. That
much at least she had done in return for the precious thing his
friendship was.

At last her eyes were opened. One day she saw her husband striding
toward the house from the stables, pale, frowning, splashed with blood.

She cried out, and ran to him, "Basil! What's happened? Are you hurt?"

"Nonsense! I've just had to kill Juno, that's all."

"Kill Juno?" she gasped. "Good Heavens! Was she mad? Did she attack
you?" She gathered up her child with an instinctive, fierce gesture of
protection.

He grinned at her. "What an imagination! Bitches don't go mad, my dear.
She littered yesterday, and her pups were all curs, that's all--every
damned one of them. Beastly luck! So I've killed the lot of them--Juno,
too."

She recoiled from him, repeating stupidly, "You _killed_ them? Killed
your own dog because her puppies were mongrels? Basil! I--I--don't think
I understand."

"Time you learned something about breeding," he muttered impatiently.
"Don't you know she might never have had another decent pup? Storm's got
its reputation to sustain. I can't have the place overrun by a lot of
curs."

He passed her, and went into the house.

She followed, stunned. All through supper, as she sat opposite her
husband, listening, answering, serving his needs, the vision was before
her of the great hound's eyes as they must have looked when, one by one,
he took her puppies from her; when at last she felt the beloved hand at
her own throat.

She looked at her husband furtively. It seemed to her that she had never
really seen him before. The coarse, hairy hands, the face with its cruel
lips, its low brow above which the hair waved up strongly like a black
plume, its eyes, handsome and bright and shallow, like the eyes of
certain animals of the cat-tribe--surely those eyes were growing too
bright? People called this family "the wild Kildares," sometimes "the
mad Kildares." _Were_ they mad? Did that explain?

Slowly a great horror of the man seized her; a fear which never
afterwards went away. He was her master, as he had been Juno's. She was
at hi