to myself.

After breakfast he invited me back to the bathroom; there was no
run on it then.

'It's quiet,' he said. Then after many gasps and splutters he
enlightened me. His nails were turning color, he told me.

'Anyone would think I had Kaffir blood in me,' he said.

Also his skin was giving him grave cause for solicitude. I did
not resist the temptation to take him rather seriously. I
administered philosophic consolation. I reminded him of Dumas and
other serviceable colored people. I rather enjoyed his misery;
poetic justice seemed to me to need some satisfaction. He, the
negrophobe, who was so ultra-keen on drawing the line was now
enjoying imaginative experiences on the far side of it.

'It seems then,' I remarked, 'That you are now a person of
color.'

He nearly fainted. He did not swear. He seemed to have lost all
his old truculence. He began to whimper like a child.

'After all, I never shared your prejudices.' I said. 'Cheer up,
old man, I won't drop you like a hot potato even if you have a
touch of the tar brush.'

He cried as if his heart would break. I saw I had gone too far.
If was like dancing on a trodden worm.

'Carraway,' I said, 'It's a pure delusion. Your nails are all
right, and so's your skin. You're dreaming, man. You've got
nerves or indigestion, or something. It's something inside you
that's wrong. There's nothing outside for anyone to see.'

His eyes gleamed. He shook my hand feebly. Then he held up his
own hand to the light.

'It's there,' he said wearily, after a while. 'You want to be
kind, but you can't make black white. That's what I've always
said. It's the Will of God, and there's nothing to gain by
fighting it. Black will be black, and white will be white till
crack of doom.'

I told him sternly that I was going to fetch the doctor to him.
He sprang at me and gripped my arm.

'I trusted you,' he said. 'I needn't have told you. You
promised.'

So I had like a simpleton.

'Only give me two days,' he said, 'then I'll go to the doctor
myself, if nothing works in all that time.'

So I said I would respect my promise loyally for those two days.

'I only told you,' he said, 'because my head was splitting with
keeping it in. It's awful to me. I thought you were a negrophile
and wouldn't think so much of it as other fellows. But for God's
sake don't give me away to them. There's lots of things to try
yet. By the way, ask that parson to pray for one afflicted and
distr