"'When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go'" (272).
When Madame revealed why she wept when she saw Kathy dancing, I was surprised at the depth and meaning behind her answer. Her reason was much more tragic than Kathy had originally thought. With the closing of Hailsham, the new students would not have the care and protection the school had offered Kathy and so many others. They would face the cruel treatment that Madame and Miss Emily fought to prevent, and people did not care to change that system. Madame recognized what the closing of Hailsham meant: the closing of the old world in which rights for the students was possible. The new world had arrived where the treatment of clones meant nothing to people just as long as they got the organs. This harsh cruel world did not care about the source of the organs; this scientific world cared about the cures for illnesses. The old world struggled to understand the needs of clones, funding places to care for them. That world was gone, and Madame had predicted this day before she saw Kathy dancing. Kathy could not have known this when she saw Madame crying, but she did sense Madame's deep sadness. Madame saw how the changing of the world would hurt innocent girls, like Kathy, who long for the old world to never let them go.
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