'It's quiet,' he said. Then after many gasps and splutters he enlightened me. His nails were turning color, he told me.
'Anyone would think I had Kaffir blood in me,' he said.
Also his skin was giving him grave cause for solicitude. I did not resist the temptation to take him rather seriously. I administered philosophic consolation. I reminded him of Dumas and other serviceable colored people. I rather enjoyed his misery; poetic justice seemed to me to need some satisfaction. He, the negrophobe, who was so ultra-keen on drawing the line was now enjoying imaginative experiences on the far side of it.
'It seems then,' I remarked, 'That you are now a person of color.'
He nearly fainted. He did not swear. He seemed to have lost all his old truculence. He began to whimper like a child.
'After all, I never shared your prejudices.' I said. 'Cheer up, old man, I won't drop you like a hot potato even if you have a touch of the tar brush.'
He cried as if his heart would break. I saw I had gone too far.
If was like dancing on a trodden worm.
'Carraway,' I said, 'It's a pure delusion. Your nails are all right, and so's your skin. You're dreaming, man. You've got nerves or indigestion, or something. It's something inside you that's wrong. There's nothing outside for anyone to see.'
His eyes gleamed. He shook my hand feebly. Then he held up his own hand to the light.
'It's there,' he said wearily, after a while. 'You want to be kind, but you can't make black white. That's what I've always said. It's the Will of God, and there's nothing to gain by fighting it. Black will be black, and white will be white till crack of doom.'