Samuel did not reply, but after a pause asked this question:
"Miss Elizabeth, do you believe that all men, white and black, are equal?"
The girl paused for a moment. In her heart of hearts she knew she did not think so, but the fundamental axiom weighed heavily on her, the well-worn arguments of the missionary arose and threatened her, pointing with skinny fingers at the abyss which lay in the road of the opposite view, so she muffled her answer up carefully in a platitude, and handed it to her hearer, trusting that the muffler would somewhat conceal its nakedness.
"Of course," she said, "the bad are not equal to the good; but if God holds that otherwise all men are equal, it would be wrong of any one to think differently."
"But white people never really think that we blacks are equal to them," said Samuel, speaking in a strained tone, "no matter what they say."
Miss Blake felt unable to reply, so after a short pause Samuel continued:
"When a black man walks in the ways of the whites, he becomes a stranger to his own kind, and he has really no friends. The white man says 'Come here to us,' and when the black man comes as near as he can, there is still a gulf that he cannot pass. I am a lonely man, Miss Elizabeth; I have left my own people, and there is no one that I can call a friend. Even you only tolerate me because you think it pleasing to God that you should do so; but you would never be my friend or let me be yours."
"There you are wrong, Samuel," replied the girl, moved by a sense of great pity; "I have the warmest friendship and regard for you, and I like you as well as if you were white."
Samuel then did an unusual thing—he held out his hand to the girl, who took it and pressed it cordially.
"Good night. Miss Elizabeth," he said. "I will do my duty better, and try to be worthy of your friendship. You have lightened my heart."