yours she is a problem to be stated, straightened, and solved. If she
had come to you, as she did to me yesterday, with her theory that all
that Southern Negroes needed was to learn how to make good servants and
lay brick--"

"I should have shown her--" Bles tried to interject.

"Nothing of the sort. You would have tried to show her and would have
failed miserably. She hasn't learned anything in twenty years."

"But surely you didn't join her in advocating that ten million people be
menials?"

"Oh, no; I simply listened."

"Well, there was no harm in that; I believe in silence at times."

"Ah! but I did not listen like a log, but positively and eloquently;
with a nod, a half-formed word, a comment begun, which she finished."

Bles frowned.

"As a result," continued Miss Wynn, "I have a check for five hundred
dollars to finish our cooking-school and buy a cast of Minerva for the
assembly-room. More than that, I have now a wealthy friend. She thinks
me an unusually clever person who, by a process of thought not unlike
her own, has arrived at very similar conclusions."

"But--but," objected Bles, "if the time spent cajoling fools were used
in convincing the honest and upright, think how much we would gain."

"Very little. The honest and upright are a sad minority. Most of these
white folk--believe me, boy," she said caressingly,--"are fools and
knaves: they don't want truth or progress; they want to keep niggers
down."

"I don't believe it; there are scores, thousands, perhaps millions such,
I admit; but the average American loves justice and right, and he is the
one to whom I appeal with frankness and truth. Great heavens! don't you
love to be frank and open?"

She narrowed her eyelids.

"Yes, sometimes I do; once I was; but it's a luxury few of us Negroes
can afford. Then, too, I insist that it's jolly to fool them."

"Don't you hate the deception?"

She chuckled and put her head to one side.

"At first I did; but, do you know, now I believe I prefer it."

He looked so horrified that she burst out laughing. He laughed too. She
was a puzzle to him. He kept thinking what a mistress of a mansion she
would make.

"Why do you say these things?" he asked suddenly.

"Because I want you to do well here in Washington."

"General philanthropy?"

"No, special." Her eyes were bright with meaning.

"Then you care--for me?"

"Yes."

He bent forward and cast the die.

"Enough to marry me?"

She answ