D’A. Are you not happy in your old home? ZINA (_looking about_). Please don’t tell master! but I get so tired—My life is so hopeless, and the driver beats me so hard— D’A. Why do they do that? I always see you at work. ZINA. Because I hid in the swamp when he was trying to sell me to some brutal traders from the coast. Oh, please buy me, Master D’Arneaux! I will work for you day and night and eat the poor food after the other hands. D’A. But you have seemed to be so much attached to your master, I had hardly dared to broach the matter of adding your pretty face and good heart to the family of my mother. ZINA. Oh, please do not say what I tell you! they would whip me so. I force myself to appear happy and contented, to please master. He is so cross when he finds me crying. Oh, he drinks so much! You will not tell him what I have said? (_Falls on her knees, sobbing._) I am so fearful of a worse fate than that. D’A. Have they dared to insult you while you are but a child? ZINA. Oh, please buy me, Master D’Arneaux, I am so _miserable_ now. D’A. Zina, your honor is more sacred than your life, and you have the right to defend it to the death, even against your master (_handing stiletto_). Take this knife and kill the miscreant who would insult you. ZINA (_kissing and hugging it to her bosom_). Oh, I am so helpless alone with them. D’A. Zina, you were not born to be a slave. God has not put the stamp of that race in your angel face. Your brain is sharper than your master’s. Think! at fourteen you read as well as the best at the plantation. In music you are a prodigy. ZINA. Oh, Master D’Arneaux, you are always so kind to me. Heaven is good to your help when it gives so good a master. D’A. It is Heaven, too, that gives _you_ so much of sympathy and goddness. ZINA. I have thought I was so bad, Master D’Arneaux. D’A. Why did you think that, my little one? ZINA. The driver says, only the wicked are unhappy. Oh, it is so hard for me to be good. D’A. You make a very grave mistake, Zina. The best people that have lived have been full of tears. ZINA. I feel so much better when I can cry. D’A. So did you cry when our Nelly died, yet you had done no wrong. ZINA (_hesitatingly_). She was such a sister to me, when I was only a miserable slave. She learned me to sing and your mother learned me to read— D’A. And you have repaid my poor, helpless old mother with so many beautiful songs— ZINA. How else can I pay her for all that makes sunshine for my miserable life? D’A. Zina, you are a noble girl. Too good and pure for labor among the coarse field hands. Heaven never made you for this. Your brain and voice came from Him who gives such gifts for a nobler purpose. To scatter happiness as He scatters beautiful wild flowers in the uninviting nooks of the earth.