"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.