“What other course is possible with a civilised system of government?” Bainbridge contended.
“But the coloured man isn’t properly civilised,” Lake insisted; “that’s the point. He hasn’t grasped the rudiments of citizenship yet.”
“Well, we’ve got to teach him. He’s learning.”
Bainbridge’s mood forced him into a reluctant opposition. He was not in sympathy with the coloured man, but he took up his defence warmly. He and Lake plunged into argument; while in the room behind them Mary sang in a fresh, sweet soprano voice to Esmé’s accompaniment, and the rest sat about and listened and joined in the popular choruses.
And, a few miles away, walking along the shore in the darkness, a man, alone and with a mind black with despair, thought of the wife he had come back to claim, and of a child which was not his...
Book Four—Chapter Thirty Three.
Throughout that night Hallam tramped along the shore, struck inland, came back to the sea, retraced his steps over the same ground; walking with tireless energy while he considered the position, so hopelessly complicated by the birth of the child.
His feeling for Esmé oscillated between love and hate. He thought of her as his dear wife, and wanted her urgently; again he thought of her as the mother of Sinclair’s child, and his heart turned from her, grew hard with bitter jealousy and revulsion. The thought of the child infuriated him—the child who stood between him and the woman whom he loved and who belonged to him. She was his wife; he could claim her. But would she give up the baby for him? Would she forsake all the new love which had come into her life for the sake of the old love, so unexpectedly come back to her, almost like a gift from the grave? He could not tell. Intimately as he knew her nature, confident in his assurance that the best of her love had been given to him, there was yet a side of her character with which he was wholly unfamiliar, the maternal side. He had no means of judging how far her motherhood would influence her. That the maternal instinct was deep-rooted with her he knew; that much she had revealed to him during their married life. She had hungered for a child...