Jumping up she whirled round and round until from sheer exhaustion she fell into her weeping husband's arms.
"O thou of little faith, counterpart of my own darker days, Eunice, awake! Awake! The currents are forming that will sweep the caste spirit out of the political life of the nation. Awake, my Eunice! Awake!" plaintively spoke the grief-stricken husband to the unheeding ears of his wife.
While hope thus wrestles with despair, we visit another parlor.
In the parlor of Tiara's home Ensal sat awaiting the coming of the girl that he had loved so long and so ardently, on whom he had now called for the purpose of asking her to link her destiny with his.
Ensal had delivered many speeches in the course of his lifetime, but he could hardly recall one that had given him as much trouble as the short speech which he had sought to prepare for Tiara. Form after form of approach came to him, but they were all rejected as being inadequate to the occasion, so that when the beautiful Tiara appeared in the parlor door Ensal was absolutely and literally speechless.
With love-lit eyes Tiara walked unfalteringly in his direction and, with a smile for which Ensal the great altruist, mark you, fancied he would have been willing to return from a thousand Africas, she extended her hand to him in greeting.
There is a saying among the Negroes to the effect that "If you give a Negro an inch he will take an ell." Whatever may be the meaning of that expression, this we do know, that when Tiara gave Ensal one hand, he deliberately—no, we won't make the offense one of premeditation—he, without deliberating the matter at all, hastily took not only more of the hand than what Tiara offered, but the other one as well.