tality ... and
yet I sensed at times such a temperate feeling in her glance, in her
voice. Even her frankness had that character, or enhanced it perhaps.

And one afternoon as we were walking along the river I spoke what was in
my heart. I had this competence. I had built the house. I could make a
fortune in time. I was beginning to need some one to help me, to be with
me. And no sooner had I spoken than I saw myself: Zoe was my half-sister
and I was proposing marriage to a girl who had no feeling that did not
bespeak to her the inferiority of the colored skin, no matter if it were
lightened, no matter by whom. Dorothy's attitude was that of the
high-bred and kindly southerner: the negroes must be kept in slavery as
a solution of the social question and for the prosperity of the South;
but at the same time the negro should be treated with kindness. And here
was Zoe, the half-sister of the man who was asking her to be his
companion for life. To what extent, then, the associate on a basis of
equality with Zoe too? This was not all. My name had been coupled with
Zoe's. Above all, I had killed a man, my rival or Zoe's hunter, as one
might choose to believe.

Thus I saw myself. My very hair began to rise and to tingle. How had I
dared to make this proposal to Dorothy? And as Dorothy was silent, and
looked down as we walked, poking with her parasol at pebbles in the
road, I was in a tense anxiety to know with what words she would break
the oppressive pause between us. "I could see," she said, "that you
liked me; and of course you wouldn't come so far to see me if you
didn't. And you must know that Reverdy's friendship for you makes a
difference. Do you know...?"

Dorothy lost her voice. The tears came out of her eyes. As she did not
speak I began again, trying to say for her what she did not say for
herself. "There's Zoe," I said. And then Dorothy quite lost control of
herself. She wept piteously. And then she grew calmer. She had faced the
reluctant fact when I spoke Zoe's name. We had stumbled up and over
that roughness in the road. Any rut or obstacle in it might now be
easier endured ... if worse was not to come.

Yes, these stories about me. Had Dorothy heard them? And the life I had
taken for Zoe's sake. I was sure Dorothy had not heard of that. Even the
first was a subject difficult to approach. I was twenty, Dorothy was
nineteen. But the greatest obstacle was the age in which we lived. Women
now draped themselves