There were other colored orators with voice,
presence, and eloquence; but their people knew their record and
discounted them. Alwyn was new, clear, and sincere, and the black folk
hung on his words. Large and larger crowds greeted him until he was the
central figure in a half dozen great negro mass-meetings in the chief
cities of the country, culminating in New York the night before
election. Perhaps the secret newspaper work, the personal advice of
employers and friends, and the liberal distribution of cash, would have
delivered a large part of the Negro vote to the Republican candidate.
Perhaps--but there was a doubt. With the work of Alwyn, however, all
doubt disappeared, and there was little reason for denying that the new
President walked into the White House through the instrumentality of an
unknown Georgia Negro, little past his majority. This is what Senator
Smith said to Mr. Easterly; what Miss Wynn said to herself; and it was
what Mrs. Vanderpool remarked to Zora as Zora was combing her hair on
the Wednesday after election.

Zora murmured an indistinct response. As already something of the beauty
of the world had found question and answer in her soul, and as she began
to realize how the world had waxed old in thought and stature, so now in
their last days a sense of the power of men, as set over against the
immensity and force of their surroundings, became real to her. She had
begun to read of the lives and doing of those called great, and in her
mind a plan was forming. She saw herself standing dim within the
shadows, directing the growing power of a man: a man who would be great
as the world counted greatness, rich, high in position,
powerful--wonderful because his face was black. He would never see her;
never know how she worked and planned, save perhaps at last, in that
supreme moment as she passed, her soul would cry to his, "Redeemed!" And
he would understand.

All this she was thinking and weaving; not clearly and definitely, but
in great blurred clouds of thought of things as she said slowly:

"He should have a great position for this."

"Why, certainly," Mrs. Vanderpool agreed, and then curiously: "What?"

Zora considered. "Negroes," she said, "have been Registers of the
Treasury, and Recorders of Deeds here in Washington, and Douglas was
Marshal; but I want Bles--" she paused and started again. "Those are not
great enough for Mr. Alwyn; he should have an office so important that
Negroes would no