Their talk
drifted back to Peter's mission here in Hooker's Bend, and Cissie was
saying:
"The trouble is, Peter, we are out of our _milieu_." Some portion
of Peter's brain that was not basking in the warmth and invitation of
the girl answered quite logically:
"Yes, but if I could help these people, Cissie, reconstruct our life
here culturally--"
Cissie shook her head. "Not culturally."
This opposition shunted more of Peter's thought to the topic in hand. He
paused interrogatively.
"Racially," said Cissie.
"Racially?" repeated the man, quite lost.
Cissie nodded, looking straight into his eyes. "You know very well,
Peter, that you and I are not--are not anything near full bloods. You
know that racially we don't belong in--Niggertown."
Peter never knew exactly how this extraordinary sentence had come about,
but in a kind of breath he realized that he and this almost white girl
were not of Niggertown. No doubt she had been arguing that he, Peter,
who was one sort of man, was trying to lead quite another sort of men
moved by different racial impulses, and such leading could only come to
confusion.
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