that's all I could get for you. I
think she's more hurt than you or I can understand."

Dick sat at his open window until midnight, and tossed on his bed for a
long time after that. He remembered the afternoon of yesterday when
together they had sat in the boat and had walked among the flowers,
quietly living in the spirit of the spring. And now, to-night a
thunderstorm had come and drenched them both! He liked his imagery, and,
tired of cursing himself, turned over at last and went to sleep.

She did appear at breakfast the next morning dressed for her school, and
looking as she always looked, quite composed and very lovely. But when
at the door he stopped to say good-by, she, for the first time, went out
and walked to the car with him. All the way he did not say a word, so
fearful was he of uttering the wrong one. They stood on the corner, both
silent, till her car came in sight.

"I hope you'll have a pleasant trip," she said, holding out her hand to
him.

"Thank you," he answered, shaking the hand limply.

So fearful was he that he would offend her by holding it a moment too
long that he scarcely grasped it at all. But, save for this slight
error, certainly on the safe side of the account, he behaved with the
utmost correctness. She boarded the car and passed from his sight. But
to the inward eye of memory she stood, illumined with the golden light
of a lover's worship, aureoled, winged, a creature for the heaven of the
enraptured gods.

CHAPTER XXVIII

It was a great relief to Hertha when Dick went away. She had been
indignantly angry at his railing against the colored people, "her
people," as she had so lately called them; and, added to her anger, was
a sense of impotence, of inability properly to answer him. Sometimes she
almost believed that it was her duty to tell the whole family the story
of her life--only thus could she convince them of the virtue of the
Negro. But she shrank inexpressibly from such a revelation. To tell of
the goodness of her colored mother meant that she must also tell of the
sin of her own mother, a sin accounted so great a disgrace that it was
hidden at the cost of a white child's racial integrity. They would enjoy
the story, she had no doubt. Mrs. Pickens would love it as pure gossip
and Miss Wood would enjoy it equally, though she would cover her
pleasure with the veil of the interest of a sociologist. To talk about
herself was always repugnant to Hertha, and to speak