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"As you say--who knows?" murmured the other. "And, after all, it is perhaps better that he died just now. He would have tried to lift us too high, and we should have fallen back. He was a hero, and the public can't always keep to the heroic level."
There were tears in her voice.
Eugenia turned from her and said nothing.
After, Sally had gone she still sat with her cup in her hand before the fire. Her child was rolling on the floor at her feet, but she did not stoop to him. She was not thinking--she was merely resting from emotion--as she would rest for the remainder of her days.
The sound of tramping feet died away. The cars pa.s.sed once more, and along the block a boy went whistling a tune. Everything was beginning again--everything would go on as it had gone since the dawn of time, and she would go with it. The best or the worst of it was that she would go happily--neither regretting nor despairing, but filled to the finger-tips with the cheerful energy of a busy life.
Suddenly she caught up her child with a frantic rapture and held him to her bosom, kissing the small hands that reached up to her lips. This was her portion, and even to-day she was content.
An hour later Dudley found her sitting there when he entered, and as he straightened himself against the mantel he looked down on her with an affectionate gaze.
"He was a great man," he said simply, and his generous spirit rang in his voice.
"Yes, he was a great man," repeated Eugenia. She looked up at her husband as he stood before her--buoyant with expectation, mellowed by the glow of a.s.sured success. He smiled into her face, and she smiled back again with quick tenderness. Then she bent above her child and kissed his lips, and the sunlight coming from the day without shone in her eyes.
