Kate stood gazing down at the grandchild she had so longed for, Jacqueline's baby; an old, wrinkled, strangely wise little face, as befitted one who had solved with his first breath both the mysteries of Life and of Death. His tiny fists were clenched, his brow puckered, as if that momentary glimpse of knowledge had not been a happy one.

No woman who has not gazed so into the face of her own dead child can understand the hopelessness, the sense of bafflement, of the futility of all human endeavor, which surged through Kate Kildare at that moment. The waste of it! The utter, insensate waste of so much passion and hope and tenderness, of such desperate agony, of such courage to bear...! There is no spendthrift so prodigal 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 in distress. "Don't! I—I never know what to do when people cry. Please!" Her voice altered suddenly. "Mother, you wait here a minute! You just wait here!"

Kate heard her leave the room, and then stooped to kiss her grandson good-by.

As she knelt there, tears raining fast on the tiny, unresponsive face in the coffin, she heard a step behind her. Thinking it was Jemima again, she did not look around.

It was some moments later that a memory came to her, so clear as to be almost a vision; the memory of her dream in Frankfort—a man standing near, with bent shoulders and gray hair, but eyes as blue as a child's, as tender as a woman's, gazing down at her, smiling down....

Behind her sounded a slight cough.

She lifted her head, suddenly trembling. "Who—who is there?" she whispered.

A voice answered, very low—"Kate!—Kate!"

Without another word, without a glance to make sure, she rose and went blindly into the arms that were ready for her.

It was like coming home.