"Hold on," cried Mr. Samson. "You can't count the Kafirs like that, you know. They 're not in it. We 're talking about white people. The whole point is that Kafirs are n't whites. A white woman belongs to her own people and must stand by their way of lookin' at things. If we take Kafir opinion, we 'll be chuckin' clothes next and goin' in for polygamy."
"Would we?" said Margaret. "I wonder. D'you think it will come to that when the Kafirs are all as civilized as we are and the color line is gone?"
"The color line will never go," replied Mr. Samson, solemnly. "You might as well talk of breakin' down the line between men and beasts."
"Well, evolution did break it down," said Margaret. "Think, Mr. Samson. There will come a day when we shall travel on flying machines, and all have lungs like drums. We shall live in cities of glazed brick beside running streams of disinfectant. There will be no poverty and no crime and no dirt, and only one language. Where will the Kafirs be then? Still in huts on the Karoo being kept in their place?"
"I 'm not a prophet," said Mr. Samson. "I don't know where they 'll be. It won't bother me when that time comes. I 'll be learning the harp."
"There 'll be a statue in one of those glazed-brick cities to the woman in Capetown," Margaret went on.
"It 'll be inscribed in letters of gold—'To —— (whatever her name was): She felt the future in her bones.'"
Mr. Samson blew noisily. "Evolution 's not in my line," he said. "It 's all very well to drag in Darwin and all that but black and white don't mix and you can't get away from that."
"I should think not, indeed." Mrs. Jakes corroborated him with a shrug. She had found herself intrigued by the glazed-brick cities, and shook them from her as she remembered that she was not "friends" with their inventor.
But Margaret was keen on her theory and would not abandon it for a fly-blown aphorism.