wide-mouthed shouting laughter. And this was the kind
of way Rose always liked to have Melanctha do it, to be engaged to
him, and to have a good warm nigger time with colored men, not to go
about with that kind of white man, never could know how to act right,
to any decent kind of girl they could ever get to be with them.

Rose, always more and more, liked Melanctha Herbert better. Rose often
had to scold Melanctha Herbert, but that only made her like Melanctha
better. And then Melanctha always listened to her, and always acted
every way she could to please her. And then Rose was so sorry for
Melanctha, when she was so blue sometimes, and wanted somebody should
come and kill her.

And Melanctha Herbert clung to Rose in the hope that Rose could
save her. Melanctha felt the power of Rose's selfish, decent kind of
nature. It was so solid, simple, certain to her. Melanctha clung to
Rose, she loved to have her scold her, she always wanted to be with
her. She always felt a solid safety in her; Rose always was, in her
way, very good to let Melanctha be loving to her. Melanctha never had
any way she could really be a trouble to her. Melanctha never had any
way that she could ever get real power, to come close inside to her.
Melanctha was always very humble to her. Melanctha was always ready to
do anything Rose wanted from her. Melanctha needed badly to have
Rose always willing to let Melanctha cling to her. Rose was a simple,
sullen, selfish, black girl, but she had a solid power in her. Rose
had strong the sense of decent conduct, she had strong the sense of
decent comfort. Rose always knew very well what it was she wanted, and
she knew very well what was the right way to do to get everything she
wanted, and she never had any kind of trouble to perplex her. And so
the subtle intelligent attractive half white girl Melanctha Herbert
loved and did for, and demeaned herself in service to this coarse,
decent, sullen, ordinary, black, childish Rose and now this unmoral
promiscuous shiftless Rose was to be married to a good man of the
negroes, while Melanctha Herbert with her white blood and attraction
and her desire for a right position was perhaps never to be really
regularly married. Sometimes the thought of how all her world was
made filled the complex, desiring Melanctha with despair. She wondered
often how she could go on living when she was so blue. Sometimes
Melanctha thought she would just kill herself, for sometimes she