Jacqueline's volatile thoughts had taken a new direction. "That means Jemmy is going away to live. 'Way off to Lexington."
Kate sighed. "Farther than that, if I know Jemima."
"Then," said the girl, slowly, "when—if—I ever go away, you'd be here all alone, Mummy!"
"Mothers expect that, dear. Always we know that some day we shall be left alone. But we do not mind, we are even glad. We risk our lives to give life to our children, and we want them to have it all, life at its fullest. Otherwise we feel that we have been failures, somehow. Breath is such a small part of life!—So when your time comes, too, my girlie, you are not to hesitate because of me. Take your future in your two hands—just as all your many mothers have done before you.—Women have even less right to show cowardice than men" (it was a favorite theme with her), "because they have to be the mothers of men, and the maternal strain is nearly always the dominant—or so Jim Thorpe says—But I don't believe that you, at least, will ever go very far away from your mother!"
She was thinking, of course, of Philip.
Jacqueline was rather pale. Her eyes dropped. "I'm not so sure. I've been thinking lately—Mummy, could I possibly go to New York? I'm so tired of home!"
Kate was troubled. This restlessness was the first indication she had noticed that the affair with Channing might have left its effect. But she said, as if the girl's wish were very natural, "To New York? That's not impossible. It's a long time since I have been out of the State myself, and I've been thinking for some time of taking you and Jemmy for a trip. Suppose we go to New York, all three of us, and buy Jemmy's trousseau? And we'll take Philip, too—it's always pleasant to have a man about. We'll have a regular old orgy of theaters and shops and galleries, such as I used to have sometimes with my father and mother, years ago. Would that please you?"
"Oh, it would be wonderful! But—" the girl crimsoned, "that is not quite what I meant, Mummy darling. When I go to New York, I want to stay. For years."
"Years! But why?"
"To study music. To begin my career."