wild oats. Your money, like charity,
would cover a multitude of faults."

"But if I make her my lawful wife and recognize her children as my
legitimate heirs, I subject myself to social ostracism and a senseless
persecution. We Americans boast of freedom, and yet here is a woman whom
I love as I never loved any other human being, but both law and public
opinion debar me from following the inclination of my heart. She is
beautiful, faithful, and pure, and yet all that society will tolerate is
what I would scorn to do."

"But has not society the right to guard the purity of its blood by the
rigid exclusion of an alien race?"

"Excluding it! How?" asked Eugene.

"By debarring it from social intercourse."

"Perhaps it has," continued Eugene, "but should not society have a
greater ban for those who, by consorting with an alien race, rob their
offspring of a right to their names and to an inheritance in their
property, and who fix their social status among an enslaved and outcast
race? Don't eye me so curiously; I am not losing my senses."

"I think you have done that already," said Lorraine. "Don't you know
that if she is as fair as a lily, beautiful as a houri, and chaste as
ice, that still she is a negro?"

"Oh, come now; she isn't much of a negro."

"It doesn't matter, however. One drop of negro blood in her veins curses
all the rest."

"I know it," said Eugene, sadly, "but I have weighed the consequences,
and am prepared to take them."

"Well, Eugene, your course is _so_ singular! I do wish that you would
tell me why you take this unprecedented step?"

Eugene laid aside his cigar, looked thoughtfully at Lorraine, and said,
"Well, Alfred, as we are kinsmen and life-long friends, I will not
resent your asking my reason for doing that which seems to you the
climax of absurdity, and if you will have the patience to listen I will
tell you."

"Proceed, I am all attention."

"My father died," said Eugene, "as you know, when I was too young to
know his loss or feel his care and, being an only child, I was petted
and spoiled. I grew up to be wayward, self-indulgent, proud, and
imperious. I went from home and made many friends both at college and in
foreign lands. I was well supplied with money and, never having been
forced to earn it, was ignorant of its value and careless of its use. My
lavish expenditures and liberal benefactions attracted to me a number
of parasites, and men older than myself led me into the p