“But isn’t any of it sincere and honest?” Blanche inquired.
“Certainly—negro and white writers and artists are actually starting to tear down the age-old barriers,” Helgin responded. “What begins as a fad can end as an avalanche. I really hope it happens.”
“But ... but tell me, do negro and white men and women have anything to do with each other?” Blanche asked, falteringly.
Helgin laughed.
“Do you see that couple over there?” he asked. “The tall, Nordic kid and the mulatto girl in red. They’re always together at every party. Of course, white men have had negro mistresses in the past, with everything veiled and a little shamefaced, but this is different. It’s out in the open now, and it’s on the basis of deep mental and spiritual understanding.”
“I don’t want to be narrow-minded,” Blanche answered, “but I don’t see how they can love each other—they must be lying to themselves. The races just weren’t meant to have physical relations with each other. There’s something, something in their flesh and blood that stands between, like ... like a warning signal. That’s it.”
As she spoke, though, she had the sensation of uttering sentences which she had borrowed from books and other people, and which did not decisively express her opinions.
“Oh, it doesn’t last long, usually,” Helgin said. “It’s not often that they live permanently together and raise families, but the infatuations are fierce enough while they last. And even intermarriage is becoming more common.”
“We-ell, I’d like to talk to a negro boy, ’f he were intelligent and brilliant-like, you know, but I don’t think I could fall in love with him, even then,” Blanche replied. “You can’t reason about it ... it’s there, that’s all.”
Vanderin walked up and spoke to Blanche. He was a tall, robust man with gray hair and a half-bald head and a ruddy, mildly sensual face. His speech and manners were genially suave and yet reserved, and there was something about his large eyes that resembled the look of a child playing with toys to hide its weariness.