Cyprian was, undoubtedly, one of the characters which cling passionately to the Christian Commandments and let the Christ pass by.
"The woman Thou gavest me," accused Adam, meanly ungrateful, and, "The Brain Thou gavest me," blamed Cyprian and all his calibre.
Man's mentality, thought Ferlie, had not altered much since Eden, though he did not, now, make the Woman the sole excuse for his shortcomings, being obliged to admit that she was more often an inspiration than an obstruction to Faith. But there were other gifts for whose shoddiness and lack of wearing-power he could still taunt their Giver, and among them ranked that Brain which was incapable of surrendering to belief in One who could so love the world.
Ferlie, her own conscience still at rest with that Great Lover, simply because of her trust in a love which, knowing all, forgives, had never attempted to probe the blank agnosticism to which Cyprian speechlessly held. She was sensible of the admiration due to an intellect which, in the face of such pessimism, could stand for Right merely for Right's sake. He had no guide but an instinctive sense of duty and when that failed him he looked to her love. Only hers in all the world, remembered Ferlie, exultantly hugging the realization of his aloofness to her heart.
And then.
* * * * * *
"Mother," said John, "there are a nice little nigger-boy in the verandah, and a grown-up nigger-girl, too. And she's crying," he added as an afterthought.
Ferlie, suspicious of the diseases John might contract from mendicants on the steps of the picturesque but unclean pagodas had, nevertheless, acquired a well-merited reputation for filling the hungry with good things. To John, who knew by heart the exciting nursery epic dealing with a dusky youthful band, whose ranks dwindled in the course of their unforeseen adventures, from ten to one ("So he got married and then there were none!") all members of the Eastern races were descendants of that fortunate survivor.
"You didn't touch the little boy, John darling," asked Ferlie with misgiving.
She recalled the burnt-out lepers which crouched at the gilded god's feet, unmolested in sun-soaked apathy.