“Mary,” he said, as they sat down on a bench on the beach, “there is something I think I ought to tell you before we get married.”
The girl turned toward him her big, sleepy, dark eyes, which always seemed to see and understand so much more than they really did, and looked away again.
“I ought to tell you,” he said—and as he said it, staring out to sea, he was so imposed upon by the importance of the moment to himself that he almost felt as if the sea listened and the waves paused—“I ought to tell you that I have negro blood in my veins.”
She was silent. There was a moment before he dared look at her; he could not bear to read his doom in her eyes. But finally he did muster up courage enough to turn his head.
The girl was placidly chewing gum and gazing at an excursion vessel that was making a landing at one of the piers.
He thought she had not heard. “Mary,” he repeated, “I have negro blood in my veins.”
“Uh-huh,” said she. “I gotcha the first time, Steve! Say, I wonder if we couldn't take the boat back to town? Huh? Whatcha say?”
He looked at her almost incredulous. She had understood, and yet she had not shrunk away from him! He examined her with a new interest; his personal drama, in which she, perforce, must share, seemed to have made no impression upon her whatsoever.
“Do you mean,” he said, hesitatingly, “that it will—that it won't make any difference to you? That you can marry me, that you will marry me, in spite of—of—in spite of what I am?”
“Gee! but ain't you the solemn one!” said the girl, taking hold of her gum and “stringing” it out from her lips. “Whatcha s'pose I care for a little thing like that?”