e paused a moment considering whether to open by
appeal or explanation. His smooth tones startled her:

"Of course, after your art exhibit and the scene of last night, Mary, it
will be impossible for us to live longer together."

She stared at him, utterly aghast--voiceless and numb.

"I have seen the crisis approaching for some time, and the Negro
business settles it," he continued. "I have now decided to send you to
my home in Alabama, to my father or your brother. I am sure you will be
happier there."

He rose. Bowing courteously, he waited, coldly and calmly, for her to
go.

All at once she hated him and hated his aristocratic repression; this
cold calm that hid hell and its fires. She looked at him, wide-eyed, and
said in a voice hoarse with horror and loathing:

"You brute! You nasty brute!"

_Thirty-two_

ZORA'S WAY

Zora was looking on her world with the keener vision of one who, blind
from very seeing, closes the eyes a space and looks again with wider
clearer vision. Out of a nebulous cloudland she seemed to step; a land
where all things floated in strange confusion, but where one thing stood
steadfast, and that was love. When love was shaken all things moved, but
now, at last, for the first time she seemed to know the real and mighty
world that stood behind that old and shaken dream.

So she looked on the world about her with new eyes. These men and women
of her childhood had hitherto walked by her like shadows; today they
lived for her in flesh and blood. She saw hundreds and thousands of
black men and women: crushed, half-spirited, and blind. She saw how high
and clear a light Sarah Smith, for thirty years and more, had carried
before them. She saw, too, how that the light had not simply shone in
darkness, but had lighted answering beacons here and there in these dull
souls.

There were thoughts and vague stirrings of unrest in this mass of black
folk. They talked long about their firesides, and here Zora began to sit
and listen, often speaking a word herself. All through the countryside
she flitted, till gradually the black folk came to know her and, in
silent deference to some subtle difference, they gave her the title of
white folk, calling her "Miss" Zora.

Today, more than ever before, Zora sensed the vast unorganized power in
this mass, and her mind was leaping here and there, scheming and
testing, when voices arrested her.

It was a desolate bit of the Cresswell manor, a tiny