r he would have acted differently. He
might have loved me and have left me--he could not have loved me and
have looked at me so!"

She was weeping hysterically. There was little he could say to comfort
her. Presently she dried her tears. Warwick was reluctant to leave
her in Patesville. Her childish happiness had been that of ignorance;
she could never be happy there again. She had flowered in the sunlight;
she must not pine away in the shade.

"If you won't come back with me, Rena, I'll send you to some school at
the North, where you can acquire a liberal education, and prepare
yourself for some career of usefulness. You may marry a better man
than even Tryon."

"No," she replied firmly, "I shall never marry any man, and I'll not
leave mother again. God is against it; I'll stay with my own people."

"God has nothing to do with it," retorted Warwick. "God is too often a
convenient stalking-horse for human selfishness. If there is anything
to be done, so unjust, so despicable, so wicked that human reason
revolts at it, there is always some smug hypocrite to exclaim, 'It is
the will of God.'"

"God made us all," continued Rena dreamily, "and for some good purpose,
though we may not always see it. He made some people white, and
strong, and masterful, and--heartless. He made others black and
homely, and poor and weak"--

"And a lot of others 'poor white' and shiftless," smiled Warwick.

"He made us, too," continued Rena, intent upon her own thought, "and He
must have had a reason for it. Perhaps He meant us to bring the others
together in his own good time. A man may make a new place for
himself--a woman is born and bound to hers. God must have meant me to
stay here, or He would not have sent me back. I shall accept things as
they are. Why should I seek the society of people whose
friendship--and love--one little word can turn to scorn? I was right,
John; I ought to have told him. Suppose he had married me and then had
found it out?"

To Rena's argument of divine foreordination Warwick attached no weight
whatever. He had seen God's heel planted for four long years upon the
land which had nourished slavery. Had God ordained the crime that the
punishment might follow? It would have been easier for Omnipotence to
prevent the crime. The experience of his sister had stirred up a
certain bitterness against white people--a feeling which he had put
aside years ago, with his dark blood, but which spra