“Don’t come on these nights,” Frona whispered to Corliss at parting.  “We haven’t spoken three words, and I know we shall be good friends.  Did Dave Harney succeed in getting any sugar out of you?”

They mingled their laughter, and Corliss went home under the aurora borealis, striving to reduce his impressions to some kind of order.

CHAPTER VIII

“And why should I not be proud of my race?”

Frona’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkling.  They had both been harking back to childhood, and she had been telling Corliss of her mother, whom she faintly remembered.  Fair and flaxen-haired, typically Saxon, was the likeness she had drawn, filled out largely with knowledge gained from her father and from old Andy of the Dyea Post.  The discussion had then turned upon the race in general, and Frona had said things in the heat of enthusiasm which affected the more conservative mind of Corliss as dangerous and not solidly based on fact.  He deemed himself too large for race egotism and insular prejudice, and had seen fit to laugh at her immature convictions.

“It’s a common characteristic of all peoples,” he proceeded, “to consider themselves superior races,—­a naive, natural egoism, very healthy and very good, but none the less manifestly untrue.  The Jews conceived themselves to be God’s chosen people, and they still so conceive themselves—­”

“And because of it they have left a deep mark down the page of history,” she interrupted.

“But time has not proved the stability of their conceptions.  And you must also view the other side.  A superior people must look upon all others as inferior peoples.  This comes home to you.  To be a Roman were greater than to be a king, and when the Romans rubbed against your savage ancestors in the German forests, they elevated their brows and said, ‘An inferior people, barbarians.’”

“But we are here, now.  We are, and the Romans are not.  The test is time.  So far we have stood the test; the signs are favorable that we shall continue to stand it.  We are the best fitted!”

“Egotism.”

“But wait.  Put it to the test.”

As she spoke her hand flew out impulsively to his.  At the touch his heart pulsed upward, there was a rush Of blood and a tightening across the temples.  Ridiculous, but delightful, he thought.  At this rate he could argue with her the night through.

“The test,” she repeated, withdrawing her hand without embarrassment.  “We are a race of doers and fighters, of globe-encirclers and zone-conquerors.  We toil and struggle, and stand by the toil and struggle no matter how hopeless it may be.  While we are persistent and resistant, we are so made that we fit ourselves to the most diverse conditions.  Will the Indian, the Negro, or the Mongol ever conquer the Teuton?  Surely not!  The Indian has persistence without variability; if he does not modify he dies, if he does try to modify he dies anyway.  The Negro has adaptability, but he is servile and must be led.  As for the Chinese, they are permanent.  All that the other races are not, the Anglo-Saxon, or Teuton if you please, is.  All that the other races have not, the Teuton has.  What race is to rise up and overwhelm us?”