a man!"

Alwyn straightened up and felt his doubts going. The evening passed very
pleasantly.

"I'm going to have a little dinner for you," said Miss Wynn finally, and
Alwyn grew hot with pleasure. He turned to her suddenly and said:

"Why, I'm rather--black." She expressed no surprise but said
reflectively:

"You _are_ dark."

"And I've been given to understand that Miss Wynn and her set
rather--well, preferred the lighter shades of colored folk."

Miss Wynn laughed lightly.

"My parents did," she said simply. "No dark man ever entered their
house; they were simply copying the white world. Now I, as a matter of
aesthetic beauty, prefer your brown-velvet color to a jaundiced yellow,
or even an uncertain cream; but the world doesn't."

"The world?"

"Yes, the world; and especially America. One may be Chinese, Spaniard,
even Indian--anything white or dirty white in this land, and demand
decent treatment; but to be Negro or darkening toward it unmistakably
means perpetual handicap and crucifixion."

"Why not, then, admit that you draw the color-line?"

"Because I don't; but the world does. I am not prejudiced as my parents
were, but I am foresighted. Indeed, it is a deep ethical query, is it
not, how far one has the right to bear black children to the world in
the Land of the Free and the home of the brave. Is it fair--to the
children?"

"Yes, it is!" he cried vehemently. "The more to take up the fight, the
surer the victory."

She laughed at his earnestness.

"You are refreshing," she said. "Well, we'll dine next Tuesday, and
we'll have the cream of our world to meet you."

He knew that this was a great triumph. It flattered his vanity. After
all, he was entering this higher dark world whose existence had piqued
and puzzled him so long. He glanced at Miss Wynn beside him there in the
dimly lighted parlor: she looked so aloof and unapproachable, so
handsome and so elegant. He thought how she would complete a house--such
a home as his prospective four or six thousand dollars a year could
easily purchase. She saw him surveying her, and she smiled at him.

"I find but one fault with you," she said.

He stammered for a pretty speech, but did not find it before she
continued:

"Yes--you are so delightfully primitive; you will not use the world as
it is but insist on acting as if it were something else."

"I am not sure I understand."

"Well, there is the wife of my Judge: she is a fact in my world; in