he darkness Hertha nodded assent.

"Oh, my dear," stroking the soft curly head that was turned from her.
"And you didn't know your people?"

"No, I was brought up among strangers."

"They were not kind to you perhaps?"

The head that Mrs. Pickens was stroking turned instantly from her touch
and a voice said with a note of anger, "Not kind? They were heavenly
kind. They did everything they could for me."

"You must have loved them then?"

"Of course, I loved them. I loved them better than any people in the
world."

"Then you have some friends in the South whom you can turn to now,
haven't you?"

The question was asked in a bright voice as though hoping to bring
something of cheer to the listener.

But Hertha with a shake of her head turned away and again looked into
the street.

"Have you quarreled? Somehow I can't think of you as quarreling, but I
know how clans battle in the South. Did something occur to make you
angry before you left? If that's so, you'll soon make it up and
everything will be right again."

Hertha breathed fast. "I can't see them any more," she whispered.

"Tell me why. Perhaps I can see some way to make things right."

"You? Why, it's people like you and Dick who separate us!"

"What do you mean?" The woman rose and in the darkness tried to peer
into the girl's face. "What have Dick and I to do with it?"

She groped for some clue to this enigmatic statement. What a ridiculous
thing to say. What indeed had she and Dick to do with it? What unless
that they were southerners? And then there flashed before her eyes a
paragraph in one of the southern newspapers that she was always reading,
a half-dozen lines telling of a girl hidden among the Negroes, later to
receive money and a name. She saw the column in the paper, at the top of
the page to the right, where the extraordinary story stood. She had a
poor memory but some things she visualized unconsciously but
unforgettably, and this had been one. She could see every word now, as
though she were reading it, except the name.

"What have Dick and I to do with all this?" she repeated with an attempt
at a laugh. "We don't believe in separating families. But it wasn't your
own family of whom you were speaking, was it? Didn't they do anything
for you?"

"Yes," Hertha answered. "When my grandfather died last October he left
me two thousand dollars."

"Ah!"

That was all. The southern woman stood clutching a chair, her head
reeling, the