"What! Our Bud! Laughing, innocent, whole-souled Foresta!" almost shouted Ensal, the horror, through the personal element brought into the matter, now doubling its force.
"Poor Mrs. Crump! Poor Negro womanhood! Crucified at the stake, while we men play the part of women, for, what can we do?" said Ensal, looking at Earl, tears of pity for his people welling up in his eyes and stealing their way down his noble face.
"This is at once the saddest and the sweetest moment of all my life," said Earl, rising. Continuing, he said:
"The fact that a race that lashes itself into a fury and cries aloud for the sympathy of the outside world if a Negro casts a look of respectful admiration in the direction of a white woman, finds no limit to what it will do to the women of our race, fills my cup of humiliation to the brim. But I find a measure of compensation in the fact that you, dear Ensal, the arch-conservative, have at last been stirred to action."
Earl now paused to give emphasis to what he was to say next.
"Ensal, the Christ has bidden you, you say, to preach his Gospel to every creature. If the white people of the South permitted you to preach the Gospel to them, you would have some basis for the hope that you would be contributing your due share to the work of altering these untoward conditions. Since they deny you your way of reaching them, come and go our way," said Earl.
"Have you at last found a plan of escape from our awful condition that commends itself to your sober judgment, Earl?" asked Ensal, looking his friend earnestly in the face.
"I have" said Earl.
"Earl, come back to-night. My spirit is tired, tired. Give me the day for the finding of my truer self. I doubt whether the elements which this terrible shock has brought to the surface can be trusted to pass sanely upon matters of such vast importance."
Earl accepted the suggestion and departed.