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.

“But, Captain, I myself am a negro.  Whom should I marry?”

“No one; no one!  Let your seed wither in your loins!  It’s better to do that; it’s better—­” At that moment the clashing of the supper gong fell on the old man’s naked nerves.  He straightened up by some reflex mechanism, turned away from what he thought was his last interview with his secretary, and proceeded down the piazza into the great empty dining-room.

CHAPTER XIII

With overwrought nerves Peter Siner entered his room.  At five o’clock that afternoon he had seen Cissie Dildine go up the street to the Arkwright home to cook one of those occasional suppers.  He had been watching for her return, and in the midst of it the Captain’s extraordinary outburst had stirred him up.

Once in his room, the negro placed the broken Hepplewhite in such a position that he could rake the street with a glance.  Then he tried to compose himself and await the coming of his supper and the passage of Cissie.  There was something almost pathetic in Peter’s endless watching, all for a mere glimpse or two of the girl in yellow.  He himself had no idea how his nerves and thoughts had woven themselves around the young woman.  He had no idea what a passion this continual doling out of glimpses had begotten.  He did not dream how much he was, as folk naively put it, in love with her.

His love was strong enough to make him forget for a while the old lawyer’s outbreak.  However, as the dusk thickened in the shrubbery and under the trees, certain of the old gentleman’s phrases revisited the mulatto’s mind:  “A terrible procession ... marching under a black shroud....  Your children, your children’s children, a terrible procession,... marching away, God knows where....  And yet—­it’s your own flesh and blood!” They were terrific sentences, as if the old man had been trying to tear from his vision some sport of nature, some deformity.  As the implications spread before Peter, he became more and more astonished at its content.  Even to Captain Renfrew black men were dehumanized,—­shrouded, untouchable creatures.

It delivered to Peter a slow but a profound shock.  He glanced about at the faded magnificence of the room with a queer feeling that he had been introduced into it under a sort of misrepresentation.  He had taken up his abode with the Captain, at least on the basis of belonging to the human family, but this passionate outbreak, this puzzling explosion, cut that ground from under his feet.

The more Peter thought about it, the stranger grew his sensation.  Not even to be classed as a human being by this old gentleman who in a weak, helpless fashion had crept somewhat into Peter’s affections,—­not to be considered a man!  The mulatto drew a long, troubled breath, and by the mere mechanics of his desire kept staring through the gloom for Cissie.