His secretary’s tragedy smote the old man.  The necessity of doing something for Peter put his thoughts to rout.  A wild idea occurred to the Captain that if he should write the exact truth, perhaps his memoirs might serve Peter as a signal against a futile, empty journey.

But the thought no sooner appeared than it was rejected.  In the Anglo-Saxon, especially the Anglo-Saxon of the Southern United States, abides no such Gallic frankness as moved a Jean-Jacques.  Southern memoirs always sound like the conversation between two maiden ladies,—­nothing intimate, simply a few general remarks designed to show from what nice families they came.

So the Captain wrote nothing.  During all the afternoon he sat at his desk with a leaden heart, watching Peter move about the room.  The old man maintained more or less the posture of writing, but his thoughts were occupied in pitying himself and pitying Peter.  Half a dozen times he looked up, on the verge of making some plea, some remonstrance, against the madness of this brown man.  But the sight of Peter sitting in the window-seat staring out into the street silenced him.  He was a weak old man, and Peter’s nerves were strung with the desire of youth.

At last the two men heard old Rose clashing in the kitchen.  A few minutes later the secretary excused himself from the library, to go to his own room.  As Peter was about to pass through the door, the Captain was suddenly galvanized into action by the thought that this perhaps was the last time he would ever see him.  He got up from his chair and called shakenly to Peter.  The negro paused.  The Captain moistened his lips and controlled his voice.

“I want to have a word with you, Peter, about a—­a little matter.  I—­ I’ve mentioned it before.”

“Yes, sir.”  The negro’s tone and attitude reminded 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!”