is true--and I--I
belong in his country where the yellow jasmine grows. There are times
when I never stop to think--weeks when I am satisfied that I have
money and a fine apartment. Then, all at once, in a minute like this,
I see that it does not weigh down the one drop of black blood in my
hand there. Sometimes I would sell my soul to wipe it out, and I
can't! I can't!"

Her emotions were again overwhelming her. The Marquise watched her
clench the shapely hands with their tapering fingers and many rings,
the pretty graceful bit of human furniture in an establishment for
such as _he_!

"An oriental prince was entertained by the Empress last week," she
remarked, abruptly. "His mother was a black woman, yours was not."

"I know; I try to understand it--all the difference that is made. I
can't do it; I have not the brain. I can only"--and she smiled
bitterly--"only learn to dance a little, and you don't need brain for
that. My God! How can they expect us to have brain when our mothers
and grandmothers had to live under laws forbidding a slave to dispute
any command of a white man? Madame, ladies like you--ladies of
France--could not understand. I could not tell you. Sometimes I think
money is all that can help you in this world. But even money can't
kill the poison he spoke of. We might be free for generations but the
curse would stay on us, because away back in the past our people had
been slaves."

"So have the ancestors of those men you listened to," said the
Marquise, and the girl looked at her wonderingly.

"_They!_ Why, Madame!"

"It is quite true. Everyone of them is the descendant of slaves of the
past. Every ancient race was at some time the slaves of some stronger
nation. Many of the masters of today are the descendants of people who
were bought and sold with the land for hundreds of years. Think of
that when they taunt you with slavery!"

"Oh! Madame!"

"And remember that every king and queen of Egypt for centuries, every
one told of in their bibles and histories, would look black beside the
woman who was your mother! Chut! do not look so startled! The
Caucassian of today is now believed by men of science to be only a
bleached negro. To be sure, it has taken thousands of years, and the
ice-fields and cave dwellings of the North to do the bleaching. But
man came originally from the Orient, the very womb of the earth from
which only creatures of color come forth."

"You!--a white lady! a noble! say th