“Certainly!” she agreed. “Slaves are no longer burned for insubordination, because masters have grown too wise to burn money! But they have some laws they use now instead of the torch and the whip of those old crude days. From their book of laws they read the commandment: ‘Go you out then, and of the heathen about you, buy bondmen and bondmaids that they be servants of your household;’ and again it is commanded: ‘Servants be obedient unto your masters!’ The torch is no longer needed when those fettered 396 souls are taught God has decreed their servitude. God has cursed them before they were born, and under that curse they must bend forever!”
“You doubt even the religion of my people?” he demanded.
“Yes!”
“You doubt the divinity of those laws?”
“Yes!”
“Judithe!”
“Yes!” she repeated, a certain dauntless courage in her voice and bearing. She was no longer the girl he had loved and married; she was a strange, wild, beautiful creature, whose tones he seemed to hear for the first time. “A thousand times––yes! I doubt any law and every law shackling liberty of thought and freedom of people! And the poison of that accursed system has crept into your own blood until, even to me, you pretend, and deny the infamy that exists today, and of which you are aware!”
“Infamy! How dare you use that word?” and his eyes flamed with anger at the accusation, but she raised her hand, and spoke more quietly.
“You remember the story you heard here today––the story of your guest and guardian, who sold the white child of his own brother? and the day when that was done is not so long past! It is so close that the child is now only a girl of twenty-three, the girl who was educated by her father’s brother that she might prove a more desirable addition to your bondslaves!”
“God in heaven!” he muttered, as he drew back and stared at her. “Your knowledge of those things, of the girl’s age, which I did not know! Where have you gained it all? When you heard so much you must know I was not aware of the purchase of the girl, but that does not 397 matter now. Answer my questions! Your words, your manner; what do they mean? What has inspired this fury in you? Answer––I command you!”