by all on this old estate down to the
humblest colored child. It is a great consolation to me," he went on,
still looking away from his son and out over the water, "that the rights
of the poorest black girl have been respected from my father's father's
day through my own. There are no white faces among these cabins to tell
of our passion and our shame. I think of this sometimes when I see that
young servant of your aunt's. In her beautiful countenance is the sin
and the disgrace of the Southern gentleman."

"Don't you believe," Lee answered sharply, "that her mother thought she
was honored?"

"That's as it may be, but she was not honored, and her child was left to
the chance care of a black woman."

"He was a beast who did that!"

The father turned at this heated speech to see his son, face flushed,
anger in his eyes.

"If he took a responsibility, he had no right later to dodge it."

Lee spoke with vehemence. He had told Hertha that he had ceased to
think, but in reality he was thinking, every hour of the day, of the
thing that he was doing.

"Whoever started the damned business going," he went on, with an attempt
at a laugh, "got America into a frightful mess. But some one did start
it, and here they are, women--well, women such as you speak of, with all
the instincts and the beauty of the white race. Don't you believe a
woman like that would be happier under the protection of a white man who
loved her than if she took up with some coarse fellow as black as her
shoes?"

"No," John Merry vale answered, "the life of such a woman is the
loneliest life in the world. She may not enter the white world and the
black world casts her off."

"Aren't you mistaken?" The question came quickly, with an undertone of
anxiety. "It seems to me that the black race must understand that
there's nothing for it but to get whiter."

"There's nothing for it but to get blacker, Son. All, black and white,
are learning to know this. Within its own circle it may build up a
civilization that shall be a humble imitation of the civilization of the
white race, a race that has had a start of thousands of years. We must
be patient, helping when we can, not hindering."

Lee scanned his father's face, but could see nothing to show that he was
thinking of any present issue; rather he was striving to express his
belief on a vexed question that would trouble this country long after he
was gone. Nor did he glance at his listener, but stood, a