dog's. And yet, he might have deserted her, he would probably have beaten her, and he most certainly would have betrayed her many, many times. It was inexplicable.
Now that Tump was dead, the mantle of his fidelity somehow seemed to fall on Peter. For some reason Peter felt that he should assume Tump's place as Cissie Dildine's husband and protector. Had Tump lived, Peter might have gone North in peace, if not in happiness. Now such a journey, without Cissie, had become impossible. He had a feeling that it would not be right.
As for the disgrace of marrying such a woman as Cissie Dildine, Peter slowly gave that idea up. The “worthinesses” and “disgraces” implicit in Harvard atmosphere, which Peter had spent four years of his life imbibing, slowly melted away in the air of Niggertown. What was honorable there, what was disgraceful there, somehow changed its color here.
By virtue of this change Peter felt intuitively that Cissie Dildine was neither disgraced by her arrest nor soiled by her physical condition. Somehow she seemed just as “nice” a girl, just as “good” a girl, as ever she was before. Moreover, every other darky in Niggertown held these same instinctive beliefs. Had it not been for that, Peter would have thought it was his passion pleading for the girl, justifying itself by a grotesque morality, as passions often do. But this was not the correct solution. The sentiment was enigmatic.
