"No!"
"What's higher? Social fictions—prejudices?"
The father lifted his head:
"Prejudices! You know as well as I that the white man's instinct of racial purity is not prejudice, but God's first law of life—the instinct of self-preservation! The lion does not mate with the jackal!"
The boy flushed angrily:
"The girl I love is as fair as you or I."
"Even so," was the quick reply, "we inherit ninety per cent. of character from our dead ancestors! Born of a single black progenitor, she is still a negress. Change every black skin in America to-morrow to the white of a lily and we'd yet have ten million negroes—ten million negroes whose blood relatives are living in Africa the life of a savage."
"Granted that what you say it true—and I refuse to believe it—I still have the right to live my own life in my own way."
"No man has the right to live life in his own way if by that way he imperil millions."
"And whom would I imperil?"