"She called me a half-caste, Mother!—me—a half-caste!"
And the mother fell at her son's feet and bowed her head to the ground, and he swept her up into his arms, raining kisses upon the piteous face.
"I don't blame you, sweetheart-mother," he said in English, whilst she sobbed on his heart. "Am I not the fruit of a brave woman's great love? Could there be anything finer than that? But my father in me made my whole body clamour for the desert when I was in England; my mother in me makes my heart throb in the desert for just one hour of her cool, misty country, one hour on a hill-top in which to watch the pearl-gray dawn. Dearest, dearest, don't sob so. It is a case of two affirmatives making a negative; two great nationalities decried, derided, rendered null and void in their offspring through the dictates of those who, in religion, prate that we are all brothers. I have just got to stick it, my mother, and life is not very long. But I shall never marry." And as he spoke, Fate flicked a page of an illustrated paper, which was but the volume of the Book of Life, and perhaps only a mother's eyes would have noticed the sudden tightening of the hand upon the marble of the balustrade as the man looked down into the pictured beauty of the woman he loved.
And, having read what had been written, he knelt to receive his mother's blessing.
"To the Tents of Purple and Gold, my darling?" she asked, smiling so bravely to hide her breaking heart.
"Not just yet, dear; a bit further North first, I think."
"For long?"
"I do not know, dear. Bless me, O my mother."
She blessed him and called to him as he stood at the head of the marble stairway:
"Come back to me, my son!"