HALCOM. Zina, why do you try to love the man who holds your life in a bondage more hateful than death? Who has returned your devotion with nothing but misery, destitution, and the most servile submission. Who would sell your soul and body to dishonor, without one pang of regret. An assassin, thief, coward, ruffian; who blights virtue and crushes the honest aspirations and civil rights of all he touches. ZINA. Oh please, master, do not speak like that. HALCOM. You have no master but God. ZINA. Oh, I do not know what to do. HALCOM. There is some dark mystery covers your early life. You are not of the race whose brain and life have been crushed in the ignorance of slavery since this Republic began. Something tells me your life was born in wrong. The brain of the Anglo-Saxon—the white skin of another nation—the quick intelligence and sublime conceptions of the northern blood, betray the lie that binds you to a life like this. ZINA. Oh, I do not know what I am. HALCOM. But God says through your angel face, and the heavenly music in your soul, that your life was not born for this. ZINA. Oh, my life is so hopeless— HALCOM. Do you remember your mother? ZINA. I had no mother. HALCOM. No mother? ZINA. I grew up among the hands; I know nothing more. HALCOM. You had but one master? ZINA. Master Brightly is all I have ever known. HALCOM. They have told you nothing of your origin? ZINA. Nothing. HALCOM. You have no little keepsake in memory of the past! ZINA. Nothing. HALCOM. (_Breaking down._) My God! There is a history here the earth must have. Give it to me, and I will be content. (_Drops head._) ZINA. (_Rising and looking at him earnestly._) Mistress D’Arneaux has told me of a good God in heaven who gave us the beautiful earth and flowers, who loves even the broken hearts of the poor and helpless, whose hand leads always to happiness and truth, whose justice is as the rocks and mountain cliffs of our old home, that are never moved. But this is not for the slave, for master beats his hands so cruelly when they have tried to do the best they could. HALCOM. It is not the fault of heaven that men are bad. As justice lives for all, so is there a counterpoise of wrong. ZINA. Oh, my master has told me nothing of what you say. HALCOM. Away back in the almost hidden past, there lived a man whose mission was to substitute love for brutality. He laid down his life for this. The same wrong that renders your life hopeless, crushed his. Almost 1900 years have passed since then, but the silent hand of the dead still lives in the better civilization of the north. ZINA. Oh, I have thought so much, and looked in hope for better days to come, but it has been so hopeless. (_Halcom looks earnestly at her._) HALCOM. How would you like to come with me? ZINA. Oh, you have been so good to me—but—but Master D’Arneaux will buy me when the war is done. Oh, his hands are so happy—