“Because they’re savages,” I returned. “It’s nothing to fret for. That sort laugh at everything that isn’t in their own fat lives.”
“I don’t know. How should I? I only don’t like being laughed at about them. It hurts; and when one can’t see…. I don’t want to seem silly,” her chin quivered like a child’s as she spoke, “but we blindies have only one skin, I think. Everything outside hits straight at our souls. It’s different with you. You’ve such good defences in your eyes—looking out—before anyone can really pain you in your soul. People forget that with us.”
I was silent reviewing that inexhaustible matter—the more than inherited (since it is also carefully taught) brutality of the Christian peoples, beside which the mere heathendom of the West Coast nigger is clean and restrained. It led me a long distance into myself.
“Don’t do that!” she said of a sudden, putting her hands before her eyes.
“What?”
She made a gesture with her hand.
“That! It’s—it’s all purple and black. Don’t! That colour hurts.”
“But, how in the world do you know about colours?” I exclaimed, for here was a revelation indeed.
“Colours as colours?” she asked.
“No. Those Colours which you saw just now.”