“Yes, but of Canadian ancestry. His father was one of the early lumber kings, and left him a lot of money; otherwise, he couldn’t have given so much unpaid service among the negroes. I never knew a human being so frantically possessed with the idea of justice for all the world.” “His wife sympathized?” “Oh, Lord, yes! Whatever he did was perfect in her sight. Strange, too, because she was a Louisiana girl, whose family had lost their all through the Civil War. And of course her ideas about the negro race were not in the least like his. How could they be? Ah, well, Anita Janvier, my lost Anita Vaughn, was certainly a shining example of that motto there, under your feet!” Gerald picked up the bellows from the hearthrug, and studied its carven legend, as he had often done when a child. “‘_Amor Omnia Vincit._’ Love conquers all.” “Love surely had his hands full, in her case. Just fancy the prejudices Anita Janvier had to overcome, before she could enter into her husband’s work as she did! She told me once, with that wonderful smile of hers, that she was glad she had been brought up on a plantation, because understanding negroes so much better than Dr. Janvier could, she could save him from the sort of mistakes most Northerners made.” “Did she win out?” laughed Gerald. Steven Grant did not answer directly, but continued in musing recollection. “Franklin Janvier had a house and office in Tenth Street, just a few doors from my studio here. We saw each other constantly, and kept in touch with each other’s work. I was surprised, however, when he took on, as office assistant, a young surgeon just graduated from a foreign school, a man who looked like a Spaniard, but who had a trace, oh, a mere trace, of negro blood. Pleasant fellow, too; very gifted and modest, and with an attachment for Janvier that amounted to idolatry, all told. A doctor born, Janvier said. His grandfather was a noted English surgeon who came out to the West Indies in the old days. Well, Charles Richmond was a fixture in Frank’s office before Anita came to live in the big Tenth Street house. She accepted him just as simply as she accepted all the rest of her new life. But she told her husband, very frankly, that Dr. Richmond’s strain of the darker blood, however negligible for us Northerners, was perfectly evident to any one brought up among negroes.” “Southerners often say such things,” said Gerald, “but I never know quite all they mean, do you?”