Suppose I
could--suppose it were possible for all Southern men to feel as you do and
act in accordance with such bitter enmity, what would be the result? It
would be suicide. Our land would become a desert. Capital and commerce
would leave our cities because there would be no security among a people
implacably hostile. Such a course would be more destructive than invading
armies. My business, the business of the city, is largely with the North.
If native Southern men tried to transact it in a cold, relentless spirit,
we should lose the chance to live, much less to do anything for our land.
We have suffered too much from this course already, and have allowed
strangers, who care nothing for us, to take much that might have been
ours. I love the South too well to advocate a course which would prove so
fatal. What is more, I cannot think it would be right. The North of your
imagination does not exist. I cannot hate people who have no hate for me,
but on the contrary abound in honest, kindly feeling."
She had listened quietly with her face turned from him, and now met his
eyes with an inscrutable expression in hers. "Have I not listened?" she
asked.
"But you have not answered," he urged, "you have not even tried to show me
wherein I am wrong."
The eyes whose sombre blackness had been like a veil now flamed with the
anger she had long repressed. "How little you understand me," she said
passionately, "when you think I can argue questions like these.
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