“You little fool—you ought to feel proud that I, a white man, would even want you—a nigger!”
Her face flamed at the despised word but she kept her temper.
“I’m not surprised at your thinking that. I suppose even that such a notion is natural—you’ve made your own ideas about your own attractiveness and irresistibility and you’ve told yourself so often you’re invincible you believe it yourselves. Seducers of servant-girls! A noble accomplishment!”
Infuriated at her impassivity and her ridicule, so markedly a contrast to what he had assumed was complacence, he sought to seize her. She eluded him with the same coolness and remarked as she left the room: “It doesn’t really seem wise, does it, to create a scene in your own home where your wife is within hearing distance?”
A faint, mocking laugh trailed back to him as he stood there after she had gone. …