inly
say it right when you say I trust you Jeff now always. You certainly
is the best man Jeff Campbell, I ever can know, to me. I never been
anyways thinking it can be ever different to me." "Well you trust me
then Melanctha, and I certainly love you Melanctha, and seems like
to me Melanctha, you and me had ought to be a little better than we
certainly ever are doing now to be together. You certainly do think
that way, too, Melanctha to me. But may be you do really love me. Tell
me, please, real honest now Melanctha darling, tell me so I really
always know it in me, do you really truly love me?" "Oh you stupid,
stupid boy, Jeff Campbell. Love you, what do you think makes me
always to forgive you. If I certainly didn't always love you Jeff,
I certainly never would let you be always being all the time such a
bother to me the way you certainly Jeff always are to me. Now don't
you dass ever any more say words like that ever to me. You hear me now
Jeff, or I do something real bad sometime, so I really hurt you. Now
Jeff you just be good to me. You know Jeff how bad I need it, now you
should always be good to me!"

Jeff Campbell could not make an answer to Melanctha. What was it he
should now say to her? What words could help him to make their feeling
any better? Jeff Campbell knew that he had learned to love deeply,
that, he always knew very well now in him, Melanctha had learned to
be strong to be always trusting, that he knew too now inside him, but
Melanctha did not really love him, that he felt always too strong for
him. That fact always was there in him, and it always thrust itself
firm, between them. And so this talk did not make things really better
for them.

Jeff Campbell was never any more a torment to Melanctha, he was only
silent to her. Jeff often saw Melanctha and he was very friendly with
her and he never any more was a bother to her. Jeff never any more now
had much chance to be loving with her. Melanctha never was alone now
when he saw her.

Melanctha Herbert had just been getting thick in her trouble with Jeff
Campbell, when she went to that church where she first met Rose, who
later was married regularly to Sam Johnson. Rose was a good-looking,
better kind of black girl, and had been brought up quite like their
own child by white folks. Rose was living now with colored people.
Rose was staying just then with a colored woman, who had known 'Mis'
Herbert and her black husband and this girl Melanctha.