"He is also alive."
"Thank God!" the girl breathed reverently. "Oh, if I could only touch his hand and look into his face! I don't care who he is, how poor and humble his home, if it's a log cabin on a mountain side, or a poor white man's hovel in town, I'll love him and cling to him and make him love me!"
The man winced. There was one depth her mind had not fathomed!
How could he push this timid, lonely, haunted creature over such a precipice! He glanced at her furtively and saw that she was dreaming as in a trance.
"But suppose," he said quietly, "you should hate this man when you had met?"
"It's unthinkable," was the quick response. "My father is my father. I'd love him if he were a murderer!"
Again her mind had failed to sound the black depths into which he was about to hurl her. She might love a murderer, but there was one thing beyond all question, this beautiful, sensitive, cultured girl could not love the man who had thrust her into the hell of a negroid life in America! She might conceive of the love of a father who could take human life, but her mind could not conceive the possibility of facing the truth with which he must now crush the soul out of her body. Why had he lied and deceived her at all? The instinctive desire to shield his own blood from a life of ignominy—yes. But was it worth the risk? No—he knew it when it was too late. The steel jaws with their cold teeth were tearing the flesh now at every turn and there was no way of escape.
When he failed to respond, she rose, pressed close and pleaded eagerly:
"Tell me his name! Oh, it's wonderful that you have seen him, heard his voice and held his hand! He may not be far away—tell me——"
Norton shook his head: