is to comfort me; why?" asked the
girl. She had risen again and stood back of the chair. She looked half
frightened.

"I say it because, if you study such questions earnestly, you will
perceive how the opinion of those self-crowned judges will dwindle;
they will no longer loom above you because of your race. My child, you
are as royal as they by nature. It is the cultivation, the training,
the intellect built up through generations, by which they are your
superiors today. If your own life is commendable you need not be
ashamed because of your race."

Kora turned her head away, fingering the rings on her pretty hands.

"You--it is no use trying to make a lady like you understand," she
muttered, "but you know who I am, and it is too late now!"

She attempted to speak with the nonchalance customary to her, but the
entire interview, added to the conversation in the corridor, had
touched depths seldom stirred, and never before appealed to by a
woman. What other woman would have dared question her like that? And
it was not that she had been awed by the rank and majesty in which
this Marquise moved; she, Kora--who had laughed in the face of a
Princess whose betrothed was seen in Kora's carriage! No; it was not
the rank, it was the gentle, yet slightly imperious womanliness, back
of which could be felt a fund of sympathy new and strange to her; it
appealed to her as the reasoning of a man would appeal; and man was
the only compelling force hitherto acknowledged by Kora.

The Marquise looked at her thoughtfully, but did not speak. She was
too much of a girl herself to understand entirely the nature before
her or its temptations. They looked, really, about the same age, yet
for all the mentality of the Marquise, she knew Kora was right--the
world of emotions that was an open book to the bewitching octoroon was
an unknown world to her.

"The things I do not understand I will not presume to judge," she
said, at last, very gently; "but is there no one anywhere in this
world whose affection for you would be strong enough to help you live
away from these people who speak of you as those men spoke, yet who
are themselves accountable for the faults over which they laugh
together."

"Oh, what you have said has turned me against that Trouvelot--that
dandy!" she said, with a certain vehemence. "He is only a Count of
yesterday, after all; I'll remember that! Still; it is all the habit
of life, Madame, and I never knew any other. Lo