“Not your tongue, but your thought. Of course your vicinage, costume, and complexion made me for a moment accept your joke of nationality, at that first meeting, but before you had uttered half your defense of the older races I felt sure that you were not a product of one of them.”
“Why was that?”
“Because it is only Christians who recognize and speak for the rights of other peoples.”
“You forget that the religion of Buddha is toleration. We Christians preach the doctrine, but practice extermination, forgiving our enemies after killing them,” I corrected. “I do not think we differ much in works from even El Mahdi.”
“Would El Mahdi ever have spoken for other races?”
“You know the weak spot in my armor, Miss Walton,” I was obliged to confess.
“That is due to you, Dr. Hartzmann. What you stated that night interested me so deeply that I have been reading up about the Eastern races and problems. I wonder if you have seen this new book of travel, The Debatable Lands between the East and West?”
“Yes,” I assented, thinking that twenty over-lookings of it in manuscript and proof entitled me to make the claim.
“You will be amused to hear that, when reading it, I thought of you as the probable writer, not merely because it begins in the Altai range and ends at Tangier, but as well because some of the ideas resemble yours. Mr. Whitely, however, tells me he has private information that Professor Humzel is the author. Do you know him?”
“He was my professor of history at Leipzig.”