“Don’t curse me for blighting your life like this. But, Duke—I never guessed. If I had—it didn’t matter to me—I would have walked over a precipice rather than cross your path.”
“How could you know? Wasn’t I sworn to philosophy?”
“And it can’t be now?”
“It can never be.”
“Think, Duke—think.”
“I never do anything else. Love may exist on pity, but not on charity. I put myself on one side. It is her happiness that has to be considered first; and, Renny, you know the way to it.”
“Duke, have you always felt like this toward her?”
“Always? I feel here that I should answer you according to my theory of life. But I have shown you my weak side. Every negro, they say, worships white as the complexion of his unknown God. From my first sight of her I have tried to rub my sooty soul clean—have tried every means like the ‘Black-Gob’ committee in Hood’s poem.”
“I think you have been successful—if any rubbing was necessary. I think at least you have proved your affinity to her, and will claim and be claimed by her in the hereafter.”
“I shall not have the less chance then, for striving to procure her happiness here.”