her hand in mine.
Mine was brown and hard from tennis and Martha's from toil, but they met
and clung.

"I--I tried that, Miss Charlotte. I had to come back," answered Martha,
and a bitter passion suddenly lit her pale face. "I'm too young to be
let go--yet."

"What do you mean, Martha?" I asked, and suddenly I felt that some kind
of chasm had yawned at my feet that I had never suspected to exist
before.

"Don't ask me, Miss Charlotte," Martha answered as the passion died out
of her face and voice and the sorrow fell over her like a shadow.

"Do you remember that afternoon at Mother Spurlock's when we were ten,
and you climbed the tree and got the apples, while I picked them up for
her to make apple turn-overs for us?" I asked her suddenly as I held on
to her hand when she tried to draw it from me. "I cried for a week to
go and see you, Martha, and it was all wrong that I wasn't allowed. My
mother would have let me come if she had been alive, but Mammy was an
ignorant negro and didn't understand."

"I cried for you, too," answered Martha, as the saddest smile I had ever
seen came across the darkness of her face. "And when you was a young
lady I crept up to the south window of the Poplars and saw you in your
dress for the big coming-out party. You were like an angel from Heaven
and I loved you. I wanted to be like you. All us girls did. They have
always envied you and watched you, but I loved you. I did! I did,
but--what chanct has a girl like me got against a man who's like--like
you are? But I did love you; I did!"

"It doesn't seem right to--to either of us to have kept us apart," I
faltered, as Martha suddenly slipped to the floor at my feet and put her
head in her hands.

"Don't be kind to me--I can't stand that. You mustn't, you mustn't! You
wouldn't if you knew," she sobbed.

"I _am_ going to be--that is, I _am_ going to help you, Martha, and you
have got to show me how," I answered her as a kind of determination
that was stronger than any like emotion I had ever had came over me.
"Tell me what to do, Martha, for you and--and for the kiddie," I
commanded her with my usual imperiousness.

"Miss Charlotte," said Martha, as she suddenly rose to her knees, looked
up into my face and bared her shoulder with one motion of her hand,
"that black bruise is from the licks father gave me when I wouldn't tell
him why it was I came back after I went away and why it was I went. He
beat me three times to make me tell