"Morlene, I confess I am a slave. My neighbors, my white fellow citizens, have formed a pen, have drawn a zigzag line about me and told me that I must not step across on pain of death. Having a mind as other men, such arbitrary restrictions are galling. I am then a slave, limited not by my capacity to feel and do, but by the color of my skin. You do not wish to marry a slave; refuse him for his own good. All of that is clear to me, and I chide you not. Come! There are lands where a man's color places no restrictions on his aspirations for what is high and useful. Let us flee thither!" "No, no, no, Mr. Warthell! Let us not flee. At least, not yet. Our dignity as a people demands that the manhood rights of the race be recognized on every foot of soil on which the sun sees fit to cast his rays." "Now, Morlene," said Dorlan, "you as good as tell me that you will never be my wife. Pray, tell me, why am I so rudely tossed about upon the bosom of life's heaving ocean?" These words were spoken in tones of utter despair. "I have not said that I would not be your wife, Dorlan. I am trying every day I live to devise a solution for our Southern problem." "She called me Dorlan, she called me Dorlan," said he to himself, rejoicing inwardly over this fresh burst of sunshine just as his gloom was deepening. Suddenly his face showed the illumination of a great hope. "Morlene! Morlene!" cried Dorlan, in a rush of enthusiasm, "Suppose I, Dorlan Warthell, solve this problem; suppose I unfetter the mind of the Negro and allow it full scope for operation; suppose I offer to you a thoroughly substantial hope of racial regeneration, will you----" Here Dorlan paused and looked lovingly into the sweet face upturned to his. "If I do these things," he resumed in sober tone, "will you be my wife?" "Mr. Warthell, if you can open the way for me to really be your wife, there is nothing in my heart that bids me shrink from the love you offer."