"You refuse to see that the shame which shadows a mother's life will smirch her children, and like a deadly gangrene at last eat the heart out of her husband's love?"
"My faith in him is too big——"
"You can conceive of no such barrier?"
"No!"
"In the first rush of love," he replied kindly, "you feel this. Emotion obscures reason. But there are such barriers between men and women."
"Name one!"
His brow clouded, his lips moved to speak and stopped. It was more difficult to frame in speech than he had thought. His jaw closed with firm decision at last and he began calmly:
"I take an extreme case. Suppose, for example, your father, a proud Southern white man, of culture, refinement and high breeding, forgot for a moment that he was white and heard the call of the Beast, and your mother were an octoroon—what then?"
The girl flushed with anger:
"Such a barrier, yes! Nothing could be more loathsome. But why ask me so disgusting a question? No such barrier could possibly exist between us!"