effect she was
producing. She sought neither advice nor comfort. Her hard, steady tone,
never varying in pitch or intensity, gave the impression of one with
whom something was completed, finished beyond possibility of change. At
the last, when her listener carried out of herself with anger at the
attack upon Tom indulged in fierce invective, she relaxed a little, and
spoke more naturally as she described her strategy and its success. But
to Kathleen's words of admiration, to her condemnation of her lover, she
paid no heed.

"Tom came to tell me Mammy was ill," she ended. "She was ill this winter
but they didn't know what it was. Now she has had another stroke and may
not live until we get there. Tom and I must go to-morrow, even though he
is so weak. He's her only son."

"How will you go?" Kathleen asked.

"You'll lend me something to wear, won't you? I shan't need much."

"Of course," was the swift answer. "I wasn't thinking of that."

"You mean how shall I travel? I shall travel in the jim crow coach with
Tom. He's my brother, you know, I'm colored."

She spoke in a hard, emotionless voice. Perplexed, Kathleen smiled up at
her.

"Oh, I mean it," the southern girl said, straightening in her chair.
"I'm going home. I shall never be white again."

"Dearie," the Irishwoman replied, "you talk as if color were a state of
mind."

"Isn't it?" Hertha asked.

Rising from her seat she went to the sink and turning on the faucet got
a drink for herself. As she put down the glass she looked at her hands.
"This is Tom's blood," she said, washing them under the running water.
"White people are so brave! They never strike any one weaker than they!
Why, Kathleen, he's just a little boy. It isn't long since he was in
short trousers. I know, I made them for him."

She wiped her hands clean and stood looking beyond Kathleen into the
world of men and women. Speech, usually so difficult, came to her in
gusts of words, thoughts that clamored for expression, the pent-up
thoughts that for many years had been pressing against her heart.

"White people are wicked. Not you, Kathleen, you are good and that's why
people laugh at you and scorn you. They hate goodness. It is the way
that old man said at the restaurant. People, white people, are cruel.
They care only for themselves. What did they do for me in this world?
They threw me out to die. I wasn't worth an hour's care. And the men,
men who've said they loved me! Loved! They saw