His quiet eyes flashed as if his heart was roused by the words it had given way to. And glad was I, not to be the man presented by it in the portraiture of memory. "Why do I admire the British race?" he continued, with his better tone recovered; "not for their energy and manliness alone, not even for their love of freedom, and great spirit of truth and justice, but most of all because they alone of all the nations I have mingled with are born without this cursed taint of savage and vile vindictiveness. If a man wrongs you, you have it out with him. You thrash him, if nature has enabled you. You vent your wrath upon him, and you go your way. The world is large enough for both of you. If you hear of his misery, and woe, and death, you only say, 'Poor fellow, there may have been more good in him than I thought.' But with us of the Eastern and the Southern blood, that blood is turned to poison by a deep and bitter wrong. By the grace of God, and the grandeur of our Christ, I have struggled long against this birth of Satan in me; but even now I have not overcome it, utterly and for ever, as a larger mind would crush it. But what has this to do with you? A great deal, if you have really set your heart upon my daughter. Are you sure that you have done that with true English strength and thoroughness? No passing whim, no delight of the eyes, as a flower or a picture catches them; but a power that will last as long as you do, and longer than the earthly part of you?" No fellow likes to be cross-examined thus; and to tell the plain truth, I had scarcely gone into myself in this awful manner. But I soon perceived that he was speaking rather at the prompting of his own remembrance, than of set form and purpose for probing me. So as the picture arose before me of Dariel and her little bird, I spared no word that I could think of; though none were half strong enough, none half staunch enough; nothing that came to my lips had any right to go out as if it spoke for me. Truly I had not been so touched by the piety, mystery, exalted beauty, and lovely maidenhood of my love, as I was by the sight of her tender self indulging her loving nature.