"This is about the last of them, isn't it?"
"Oh, there is my share of Valeria's still left."
He turned away, and continued his walk. His mother watched him covertly.
"The waste of it, the futility," he muttered, "bolstering up a wreck, instead of launching new ships. The very savages are wiser. They don't stint the young to feed the useless, the dying."
"Don't talk nonsense."
She looked very angry.
"It's the rotten place in civilization," he went on, with some excitement—"skin-deep sentimentality, and a careless cruelty reaching down to the core of things. Devices of every kind to keep the unfit here, while the young and strong starve in the streets. Hospitals for the hopeless, not even bread for the ambitious—"
"Where is Emmeline?" interrupted Mrs. Gano, looking down the long room towards Val.
"I don't know."
"Go and find her, and don't make her cry. I'll call you both when I want you."