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