"Occasionally," Nel returned quietly, "the white man commits worse crimes than that: he will murder his own people and rob his unborn child. But we style his crime differently. It is the tide one affixes to an act which proclaims it a crime or a virtue." As though aware that he was treading on difficult ground, warned possibly by the steady look from Freidja's sombre eyes, he turned again to Matheson and skilfully directed the talk into a safer channel. "I like the native," he said. "I always fight his battles. He is not highly developed mentally; he is largely instinctive; but his instincts on the whole are good." "The mental inferiority, I suppose," Matheson ventured, "is the result of his want of civilisation. He is coming on rapidly, don't you think?" "He advances undoubtedly. But I think the mental inferiority strikes deeper than that. I believe myself that eventually the black races will become extinct. Wherever the white man penetrates the effect becomes marked in succeeding generations." "In my opinion that is regrettable," Matheson observed. "I am in favour of race preservation." "Yes! Well, so am I. The dark man has his uses." "He is a lazy schelm," put in Oom Koos, his customary amiability temporarily eclipsed behind his disapproval of the talk. "And the English are spoiling him. They give him too much money. Wages go up yearly; and the higher the wage the less he works." "That's the rule all up the scale, isn't it?" Matheson asked with a laugh. "It's a sign of civilisation, anyway." "This country is only in the making," Krige remarked, in his slow unexpected way of breaking in upon a conversation in which he had taken no previous part. "European principles don't apply out here." "One has to live in this country for many years," Mrs Krige threw in, loyally supporting her son's statement, "before one begins to understand it; and even then there is always much to learn." Which obvious remark put a period to the conversation, and when the talk revived ethnological discussion was tacitly tabooed. With the finish of breakfast Oom Koos announced his intention to start. It was a long drive to De Aar, and he had business to transact there. He did not consult Matheson. He went with Andreas Krige to the stables to superintend the inspanning of his horses, and later drove up to the fence of spiky aloes and waited for his passenger in the patch of shade which they cast along the ground.