had raked out of the whole army.

Strangely enough, the gunman's outbreak brought a kind of relief to
Peter Siner. It exonerated him. He was not suspected of wronging Cissie;
or, rather, whether he had or had not wronged her made no difference to
Tump. Peter's crime consisted in mere being, in existing where Cissie
could see him and desire him rather than Tump. Why it calmed Peter to
know that Tump held no dishonorable charge against him the mulatto
himself could not have told. Tump's violence showed Peter the certainty
of his own death, and somehow it washed away the hope and the thought of
escape.

Half-way down the hill they entered the edge of Niggertown. The smell of
sties and stables came to them. Peter's thoughts moved here and there,
like the eyes of a little child glancing about as it is forced to leave
a pleasure-ground.

Peter knew that Jim Pink, who now made a sorry figure in their rear,
would one day give a buffoon's mimicry of this his walk to death. He
thought of Tump, who would have to serve a year or two in the Nashville
Penitentiary, for the murder of negroes is seldom severely punished. He
thought of Cissie. He was being murdered because Cissie desired him.

And then Peter remembered the single bit of wisdom that his whole life
had taught him. It was this: no people can become civilized until the
woman has the power of choice among the males that sue for her hand. The
history of the white race shows the gradual increase of the woman's
power of choice. Among the yellow races, where this power is curtailed,
civilization is curtailed. It was this principle that exalted chivalry.
Upon it the white man has reared all his social fabric.

So deeply ingrained is it that almost every novel written by white men
revolves about some woman's choice of her mate being thwarted by power
or pride or wealth, but in every instance the rightness of the woman's
choice is finally justified. The burden of every song is love, true
love, enduring love, a woman's true and enduring love.

And in his moment of clairvoyance Peter saw that these songs and stories
were profoundly true. Against a woman's selectiveness no other social
force may count.

That was why his own race was weak and hopeless and helpless. The males
of his people were devoid of any such sentiment or self-repression. They
were men of the jungle, creatures of tusk and claw and loin. This very
act of violence against his person condemned his whole race.