“No, no,” she said, “not to me; it is the only really happy one I have spent since I left my country. You have all been so kind to me; you, the captain, and the doctor, all of you, you have made no difference, you have treated me as if I was one of you, as if I was born a lady.”
“Hasn’t the doctor always been kind to you?” I said.
“Oh, yes,” she replied, “always very kind, but there is nobody here like him.”
“He loves you very much.”
“Yes,” she said, in the most unembarrassed and natural manner possible, “he told me so himself.”
“And can’t you return his love?”
“I do love him as I do my father, brother, or sister.”
“Couldn’t you add the word husband?”
“Never, never,” she said, “Mr Slick. He thinks he loves me now, but he may not think so always. He don’t see the red blood now, he don’t think of my Indian mother; when he comes nearer perhaps he will see plainer. No, no, half-cast and outcast, I belong to no race. Shall I go back to my tribe and give up my father and his people? they will not receive me, and I must fall asleep with my mother. Shall I stay here and cling to him and his race, that race that scorns the half-savage? never! never! when he dies I shall die too. I shall have no home then but the home of the spirits of the dead.”
“Don’t talk that way, Jessie,” I said, “you make yourself wretched, because you don’t see things as they are. It’s your own fault if you are not happy. You say you have enjoyed this day.”