SOOSIE 147 



colour. He frankly confessed that he wanted a wife as 

 a companion and helpmeet ; that he could not hope, in 

 consideration of his own lowly birth and slender means 

 and uphill task, to induce a white girl to halve his 

 loneliness. He had studied Soosie, and was sure that 

 she was his superior except in matter of colour. She 

 was far better schooled and had been used to softer 

 life. 



"What," he asked, "don't you and the Missis and 

 Miss Clare and Fan, and Bob, here, love her ? You 

 couldn't help it; and you are not ashamed. You treat 

 her as your own child. It would be no sin for me to 

 take her as my own wife. If she'll have me I'll marry 

 her before the best parson in the North. What of her 

 complexion ? It's only a little more sunburnt than 

 mine." 



But Soosie was shy more than shy. Her sensitive- 

 ness amounted to physical repulsion. She declared that, 

 though she liked Dan, she would never marry. 



"I do feel in my heart that I am nothing more than 

 a black girl, and almost a savage. What if some day 

 the horrible part of me got stronger, and I did go to the 

 mountain by myself ? I have heard you say that 

 blood will tell. Often I am frightened of myself, es- 

 pecially when the nights are very still and I listen to 

 the scrub hens chuckling and the flying foxes squealing, 

 and smell the scents of thfc scrub. It must be very nice 

 to live away from everybody in the very loneliest part 

 of the big mountain, and to feel at home with actually 

 wild things." 



There was no affectation between us, so I said in 

 comfort : "But my dear girl, you are whiter at heart than 

 many a girl born white. It is only your skin that it 

 dark. Perhaps if in a year or so you did marry Dan 

 it would be the best, for a good woman, no matter what 



