e country.

But reasoning thus was not without effect upon a mind by nature
reasonable above the average. Tryon's race impulse and social prejudice
had carried him too far, and the swing of the mental pendulum brought
his thoughts rapidly back in the opposite direction. Tossing uneasily
on the bed, where he had thrown himself down without undressing, the
air of the room oppressed him, and he threw open the window. The cool
night air calmed his throbbing pulses. The moonlight, streaming
through the window, flooded the room with a soft light, in which he
seemed to see Rena standing before him, as she had appeared that
afternoon, gazing at him with eyes that implored charity and
forgiveness. He burst into tears,--bitter tears, that strained his
heartstrings. He was only a youth. She was his first love, and he had
lost her forever. She was worse than dead to him; for if he had seen
her lying in her shroud before him, he could at least have cherished
her memory; now, even this consolation was denied him.

The town clock--which so long as it was wound up regularly recked
nothing of love or hate, joy or sorrow--solemnly tolled out the hour of
midnight and sounded the knell of his lost love. Lost she was, as
though she had never been, as she had indeed had no right to be. He
resolutely determined to banish her image from his mind. See her again
he could not; it would be painful to them both; it could be productive
of no good to either. He had felt the power and charm of love, and no
ordinary shook could have loosened its hold; but this catastrophe,
which had so rudely swept away the groundwork of his passion, had
stirred into new life all the slumbering pride of race and ancestry
which characterized his caste. How much of this sensitive superiority
was essential and how much accidental; how much of it was due to the
ever-suggested comparison with a servile race; how much of it was
ignorance and self-conceit; to what extent the boasted purity of his
race would have been contaminated by the fair woman whose image filled
his memory,--of these things he never thought. He was not influenced
by sordid considerations; he would have denied that his course was
controlled by any narrow prudence. If Rena had been white, pure white
(for in his creed there was no compromise), he would have braved any
danger for her sake. Had she been merely of illegitimate birth, he
would have overlooked the bar sinister. Had her people been