"Men and women ain't on their own in this world," he said seriously. "They 've got to think of the rest of the crowd. We 're all in the same boat out here—white people holdin' up the credit of the race. Can't afford to have deserters goin' over to the other camp, don't y' know. Even supposin'—I say, supposin'—there was nothing else to prevent a white girl from taking on a nigger, it's lowerin' the flag—what?"
"A woman like that deserves to be horsewhipped," cried Mrs. Jakes, with sudden vigor. "To go and marry a Kafir—the vile creature."
"This is very interesting," said Margaret. "Do you mean the Kafir is vile, Mrs. Jakes, or the woman?"
"I mean both," retorted Mrs. Jakes. "In this country we know what such creatures are. A respectable woman does n't let a Kafir come near her if she can help it. She never speaks to them except to give them their orders. And as to—to marrying them, or being friendly with them—why, she 'd sooner die."
Margaret had started a subject which no South African can exhaust. They discuss it with heat, with philosophic impartiality, with ethnological and eugenic inexactitudes, and sometimes with bloodshed; but they never wear it out.
"You see, Miss Harding, there are other reasons against it," Mr. Samson struck in again. "There 's the general feelin' on the subject and you can't ignore that. One woman mustn't do what a million other women feel to be vile. It 's makin' an attack on decency—that 's what it comes to. A woman might feel a call in the spirit to marry a monkey. It might suit her all right—might be the best thing she could do, so far as a woman of that sort was concerned; but it would n't be playin' the game. It wouldn't be cricket."
He shook his spirited white head with a frown.
"I see," said Margaret. "But there 's one other point. I only want to know, you know."
"Naturally," agreed Mr. Samson. "What's the point?"
"Well, there are about ten times as many black people as white in this country. What about their sense of decency? Doesn't that suffer a little by this—this trades-union of the whites? That woman in Capetown has all the whites against her and all the blacks for her—I suppose. There 's a majority in her favor, at any rate."