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l as Nature. For one perfected product that pleases her, hundreds of preciously guarded lives, such as this, thrown aside like so many pot-shards, useless, done for--and all to what purpose?... For the moment Kate visualised Nature as some incredible, insatiable goddess, a female Moloch, who must be propitiated always with mother's tears.... Then she had a thought of her husband; of his tenderness with their little suffering Katherine, his remorse-stricken grief over the child's death. Was that the purpose? For the moment, she forgot the other Basil whom she knew better, the one who had put aside his own flesh and blood as ruthlessly as Nature herself had put aside this little son of Jacqueline. "Basil would be sorry for this," she whispered, half aloud. "Poor Basil!" She did not know that she was weeping, or that she was not alone, till Jemima touched her hand; the girl's nearest approach to a caress. "So this," said the latter, in a queer, small voice, "is the last of the Kildares of Storm!... Why do you cry, Mother? Aren't you _glad_?" She spoke fiercely. "Isn't it time we made way in the world for--better people?" Kate tried haltingly to explain the sorrow that was upon her. "He wasn't all Kildare, this little fellow.... You never knew my father, or his father. They were gallant gentlemen, Jemima. All my life I have wanted sons like them, and like--the Benoix men. I have been proud of my health, my strength. I have lived honorably, I have tried to keep myself a--a--" "A gallant gentleman," said Jemima, nodding. "Yes. So that the spark should remain alive, for my grandsons. It seemed to me--" She broke off, finding it impossible to put into words what she felt; that her own indomitable vitality, her energy, her courage, the thing she had called "the spark," was something which had been put in her hands to guard for the long future, and that, instead, here in her hands it had gone out. This meant death to Kate Kildare, far more than the separation of body and spirit would mean death. Each woman was busy with her own thoughts for a while; widely different thoughts. Jemima murmured presently, "Philip said 'our son,' Mother! Oh, do you suppose that was--true? Or was he--" She did not finish her own question; nor did Kate attempt to answer it. "That would be like Philip," muttered the girl at last. "Anyway, it's his own affair." She saw that her mother was sobbing. "Don't!" she whispered
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