"Red and white cannot mate together," Nahnya said, with her strange, fatalistic calmness. "He is gone away. I will never see him again."
"Swear it!" demanded Philippe.
She raised her hand. "I swear it!" she said, without a tremor.
He was much comforted. He scowled still, not knowing what to say.
"Do you want to marry me?" she asked again.
It was a kind of stricken look that he turned on her. "I want to marry you," he murmured.
"There is my hand," said Nahnya. "Deal straight with me, and I will do all that I say."
He fondled her hand clumsily.
Nahnya's eyes became kindly. "You were a good boy at the school," she said. "It was good talk that we talked together. Why do you want to be called a bad man now, and not work, and drink, and make trouble everywhere?"
"I will tell you why I change," said Philippe boastfully. "I go among the white men, thinking to find my brothers. My father was a white man, and married to my mother in church. But they think little of me because my skin is dark. They treat me like a slave, and give me hard work and little pay like a slave. So I hate them. I am bad! I make all the trouble I can!"