Princess. She smiled and said lightly, “Certainly not,” and then with a pause and a look straight across the table to the turban and tunic, “nor will royal blood offer insult to him.” The Indian bowed to the tablecloth and was silent.
As they rose and sauntered out to coffee in the silk and golden drawing-room, there was a discussion, started of course by the Egyptian, first of the style of the elaborate piano case and then of Schönberg's new and unobtrusive transcription of Bach's triumphant choral Prelude, “Komm, Gott, Schöpfer.”
The Princess sat down. Matthew could not take his eyes from her. Her fingers idly caressed the keys as her tiny feet sought the pedals. From white, pearl-embroidered slippers, her young limbs, smooth in pale, dull silk, swept up in long, low lines. Even the delicate curving of her knees he saw as she drew aside her drapery and struck the first warm tones. She played the phrase in dispute—great chords of aspiration and vision that melted to soft melody. The Egyptian acknowledged his fault. “Yes—yes, that was the theme I had forgotten.”
Again, Matthew felt his lack of culture audible, and not simply of his own culture, but of all the culture in white America he had unconsciously and foolishly, as he now realized, made his norm. Yet withal Matthew was not unhappy. If he was a bit out of it, if he sensed divided counsels and opposition, yet he still felt almost fiercely that that was his world. Here are culture, wealth, and beauty. Here was power, and here he had some recognized part. God! If he could just do his part, any part! And he waited impatiently for the real talk to begin again.
It began and lasted until after midnight. It started on lines so familiar to Matthew that he had to shut his eyes and stare again at their swarthy faces: Superior races—the right to rule―born to command―inferior breeds―the lower classes―the rabble. How the Egyptian rolled off his tongue his contempt for the “r-r-rabble”! How contemptuous was the young Indian of inferior races! But how humorous it was to Matthew to see all tables turned; the rabble now was the white workers of Europe; the inferior races were the ruling whites of Europe and America. The superior races were yellow and brown.
“You see,” said the Japanese, “Mr. Town, we here are all agreed and not agreed. We are agreed that the present white hegemony of the world is nonsense; that the darker peo-
