During dinner, Mrs. Pickens, as she looked at Hertha from time to time,
sitting silently in her place, thought she had never seemed so lovely.
Too often of late she had been worried and tired; to-night her face
expressed a glad content, her pale cheeks were pink with color, and
every now and then a look of expectancy came into her eyes. Something
had happened, of this her landlady felt sure, and she regretted that she
was going out and could not properly interrogate her pretty boarder.

We love to speak of the maternal instinct, counting it an attribute of
every mother who looks down upon her new-born child; yet in the eyes of
many women the madonna look never comes however many children they bring
into the world. But Hertha was of no such stock. Her mother had turned
toward Death when the gift that she had brought into the world might no
longer rest in the hollow of her arm. To her daughter, life glowed
purest when looking into the eyes of a child. And in the care and
companionship of the first baby that she had carried--a squirming lump
in its little white frock, its brown feet kicking futilely against her
body, its brown head resting upon her shoulder--she had begun to be
about her motherly business. It was the madonna look that Mrs. Pickens
saw in Hertha's eyes, the look of pride that her baby was growing up as
he should, and of intense anticipation at the talk that she would have
with him again.

But when the dinner was over, when Mrs. Pickens had gone out and the
others had retired to their rooms, a worried expression came into
Hertha's face. She was in the North where color prejudice was not
extreme, but she was also in a southern home and she could not decide in
what spot to meet her visitor. As she sat in her room she half laughed,
half cried over it. Probably in all the house there was no one who, if
she explained the situation, would not be glad to have her receive a
visit from a boy who had lived in her home town and who could bring her
news of her old friends there--such old friends--whether he were black
or white. And yet in the whole house there did not seem to be a proper
spot in which to receive him. From the kitchen, presided over by a cross
and busy white cook, to her bedroom, where only if he were a servant he
might enter, he had no rightful place. And in the street or the
park--she gasped at the thought of what others would think. There really
seemed no possible number of appropriate square feet,