ot talk to me of like and dislike when
your dreadful parties have anything to do with either! Besides, if I had
any sympathy with either side it would be for the whites. But the whole
thing is absurd, complicated, mediaeval, feudal--anything you like
except sensible. Your intolerance is--intolerable."

"True tolerance should tolerate even intolerance," observed Orsino
smartly.

"That sounds like one of the puzzles of pronunciation like 'in un piatto
poco cupo poco pepe pisto cape,'" laughed Maria Consuelo. "Tolerably
tolerable tolerance tolerates tolerable tolerance intolerably--"

"You speak Italian?" asked Orsino, surprised by her glib enunciation of
the difficult sentence she had quoted. "Why are we talking a foreign
language?"

"I cannot really speak Italian. I have an Italian maid, who speaks
French. But she taught me that puzzle."

"It is odd--your maid is a Piedmontese and you have a good accent."

"Have I? I am very glad. But tell me, is it not absurd that you should
hate these people as you do--you cannot deny it--merely because they are
whites?"

"Everything in life is absurd if you take the opposite point of view.
Lunatics find endless amusement in watching sane people."

"And of course, you are the sane people," observed Maria Consuelo.

"Of course."

"What becomes of me? I suppose I do not exist? You would not be rude
enough to class me with the lunatics."

"Certainly not. You will of course choose to be a black."

"In order to be discontented, as you are?"

"Discontented?"

"Yes. Are you not utterly out of sympathy with your surroundings? Are
you not hampered at every step by a network of traditions which have no
meaning to your intelligence, but which are laid on you like a harness
upon a horse, and in which you are driven your daily little round of
tiresome amusement--or dissipation? Do you not hate the Corso as an
omnibus horse hates it? Do you not really hate the very faces of all
those people who effectually prevent you from using your own
intelligence, your own strength--your own heart? One sees it in your
face. You are too young to be tired of life. No, I am not going to call
you a boy, though I am older than you, Don Orsino. You will find people
enough in your own surroundings to call you a boy--because you are not
yet so utterly tamed and wearied as they are, and for no other reason.
You are a man. I do not know your age, but you do not talk as boys do.
You are a man--then be a m