Frowenfeld handed it to her.  She started to pass through the door in the rue Royale by which Doctor Keene had entered; but on seeing on its threshold Agricola frowning upon her, she turned quickly with evident trepidation, and hurried out into the darkness of the other street.

Agricola entered.  Doctor Keene looked about the shop.

“I tell you, Agricole, you didn’t have it with you; Frowenfeld, you haven’t seen a big knotted walking-stick?”

Frowenfeld was sure no walking-stick had been left there.

“Oh, yes, Frowenfeld,” said Doctor Keene, with a little laugh, as the three sat down, “I’d a’most as soon trust that woman as if she was white.”

The apothecary said nothing.

“How free,” said Agricola, beginning with a meditative gaze at the sky without, and ending with a philosopher’s smile upon his two companions,—­“how free we people are from prejudice against the negro!”

“The white people,” said Frowenfeld, half abstractedly, half inquiringly.

“H-my young friend, when we say, ‘we people,’ we always mean we white people.  The non-mention of color always implies pure white; and whatever is not pure white is to all intents and purposes pure black.  When I say the ‘whole community,’ I mean the whole white portion; when I speak of the ‘undivided public sentiment,’ I mean the sentiment of the white population.  What else could I mean?  Could you suppose, sir, the expression which you may have heard me use—­’my downtrodden country’—­includes blacks and mulattoes?  What is that up yonder in the sky?  The moon.  The new moon, or the old moon, or the moon in her third quarter, but always the moon!  Which part of it?  Why, the shining part—­the white part, always and only!  Not that there is a prejudice against the negro.  By no means.  Wherever he can be of any service in a strictly menial capacity we kindly and generously tolerate his presence.”

Was the immigrant growing wise, or weak, that he remained silent?

Agricola rose as he concluded and said he would go home.  Doctor Keene gave him his hand lazily, without rising.

“Frowenfeld,” he said, with a smile and in an undertone, as Agricola’s footsteps died away, “don’t you know who that woman is?”

“No.”

“Well, I’ll tell you.”

He told him.

* * * * *

On that lonely plantation at the Cannes Brulees, where Aurore Nancanou’s childhood had been passed without brothers or sisters, there had been given her, according to the well-known custom of plantation life, a little quadroon slave-maid as her constant and only playmate.  This maid began early to show herself in many ways remarkable.  While yet a child she grew tall, lithe, agile; her eyes were large and black, and rolled and sparkled if she but turned to answer to her name.  Her pale yellow forehead, low and shapely, with the jet hair above it, the heavily