"But there is more," he said, coloring. "There was passion and dishonor in my heart, Keela, until, one night, I fought and won—"
"Is it not enough for me that you won?" asked Keela gently and broke off, wild color staining her cheeks and forehead.
Mic-co stood in the doorway.
"Mic-co," she said bravely, "I—I would have you tell him that he is strong and brave and clean enough to love. He—he does not know it."
She fled with a sob.
"Have you forgotten?" asked Mic-co slowly.
"I care nothing for race!" cried Carl with a flash of his fine eyes. "Must I pattern my life by the set tenets of race bigotry. I have known too many women with white faces and scarlet souls."
"If I know you at all," said Mic-co with a quiet smile, "there will be no pattern, save of your own making."
"I come of a family who rebel at patterns," said Carl. "My mother—my uncle—my cousin. Let me tell you all," and he told of the night in the Sherrill garden; of the brutal desire that had later come with the brooding and the wild disorders of his brain, to drive him deeper and deeper into the black abyss until he fought and won by the camp fire; of his consequent panic-stricken rebound of horror and remorse when he had put it all aside, fighting the call with reason, seeking desperately to crush it out of his life, until the sight of Keela in the satin gown had sent him back with a shock to that finer, cleaner, quieter call that had come in the Sherrill garden. Then the disordered interval between had fled to the limbo of forgotten things.
Mic-co heard his story to the end without comment. He was silent so long that Carl grew uncomfortable.