She found his manner of speaking of the subject curiously reminiscent of Ford.
Kamis uttered an embarrassed laugh. "Well," he said, "I 'm afraid I 'm not very sympathetic. I suppose I 've lived too long among white people; my proper instincts have been perverted. But the fact is, I think that woman was—wrong."
"Oh," said Margaret. "Why?"
"There isn't any why," he answered. "It 's a matter of feeling, you know; not of reason. Really, it amounts to—it 's absurd, of course, but it 's practically negrophobia. You can't bring a black man up as a white man and then expect him to be entirely free from white prejudices. Can you?"
"But—" Margaret spoke in some bewilderment. "What's the use of being black," she demanded, "if you 've got all the snobbishness of the white? That 's the way Mr. Ford spoke about it. He said he could feel all that was fine in it, but he wouldn't speak to such a woman. I thought that was cruel."
"Oh, I don't know," said Kamis.
"Another time," said Margaret deliberately, "he asked me whether it didn't make my flesh creep to touch your hand."
"He thought it ought to?"
"Yes. But it doesn't," said Margaret. "How does your negrophobia face that fact? Doesn't it condemn me to the same shame as the woman in Capetown? Or does it make exceptions in the case of a particular negro?"
"I said I did n't reason about it," replied Kamis. "I told you what I felt. You asked me and I told you."