the Captain that the supper gong would soon sound and they would best separate at once.
“It—it's about Cissie Dildine,” the old lawyer hurried on.
Peter nodded slightly.
“Yes, you mentioned that before.”
The old man lifted a thin hand as if to touch Peter's arm, but he did not. A sort of desperation seized him.
“But listen, Peter, you don't want to do—what's in your mind!”
“What is in my mind, Captain?”
“I mean marry a negress. You don't want to marry a negress!”
The brown man stared, utterly blank.
“Not marry a negress!”
“No, Peter; no,” quavered the old man. “For yourself it may make no difference, but your children—think of your children, your son growing up under a brown veil! You can't tear it off. God himself can't tear it off! You can never reach him through it. Your children, your children's children, a terrible procession that stretches out and out, marching under a black shroud, unknowing, unknown! All you can see are their sad forms beneath the shroud, marching away—marching away. God knows where! And yet it's your own flesh and blood!”
Suddenly the old lawyer's face broke into the hard, tearless contortions of the aged. His terrible emotion communicated itself to the sensitive brown man.
