"Stop! don't--don't say it!--take it back! Tell me that it's not true--tell me that you only said it to convince me and I'll believe you. If the hideous thing is true--for the love of God deny it now! If it's true--lie to me"--her voice broke and she clung to Norton's arms with cruel grip--"lie to me! Tell me that you didn't mean it, and I'll believe you--truth or lie, I'll never question it! I'll never cross your purpose again--I'll do anything you tell me, major"--she lifted her streaming eyes and began slowly to sink to her knees--"see how humble--how obedient I am! You don't hate me, do you? I'm just a poor, lonely girl, helpless and friendless now at your feet"--her head sank into her hands until the beautiful brown hair touched the floor--"have mercy! have mercy on me!" Norton bent low and fumbled for the trembling hand. He couldn't see and for a moment words were impossible. He found her hand and pressed it gently: "I'm sorry, little girl! I'd lie to you if I could--but you know a lie don't last long in this world. I've lied about you before--I'd lie now to save you this anguish, but it's no use--we all have to face things in the end!" With a mad cry of pain, the girl sprang to her feet and staggered to the table: "Oh, God, how could any man with a soul--any living creature, even a beast of the field--bring me into the world--teach me to think and feel, to laugh and cry, and thrust me into such a hell alone! My proud father--I could kill him!" Norton extended his hands to her in a gesture of instinctive sympathy: "Come, you'll see things in a calm light to-morrow, you are young and life is all before you!" "Yes!" she cried fiercely, "a life of shame--a life of insult, of taunts, of humiliation, of horror! The one thing I've always loathed was the touch of a negro----" She stopped suddenly and lifted her hand, staring with wildly dilated eyes at the nails of her finely shaped fingers to find if the telltale marks of negro blood were there which she had seen on Cleo's. Finding none, the horror in her eyes slowly softened into a look of despairing tenderness as she went on: "The one passionate yearning of my soul has been to be a mother--to feel the breath of a babe on my heart, to hear it lisp my name and know a mother's love--the love I've starved for--and now, it can never be!" She had moved beyond the table in her last desperate cry and Norton followed with a look of tenderness: "Nonsense," he cried persuasively, "you're but a child yourself. You can go abroad where no such problem of white and black race exists. You can marry there and be happy in your home and little ones, if God shall give them!" She turned on him savagely: "Well, God shall not give them! I'll see to that! I'm young, but I'm not a fool. I know something of the laws of life. I know that Tom is not like you"--she turned and pointed to the portrait on the wall--"he is like his great-grandfather! Mine may have been----"