in order that he might lift her lips to his when he
pleased. After all, there is no way for a man to rest without a woman.
All he can do is to stop work.

For a long time they sat transported amid the dusty honeysuckles and
withered blooms, but after a while they began talking a little at a time
of the future, their future. They felt so indissolubly joined that they
could not imagine the future finding them apart. There was no need for
any more trouble with Tump Pack. They would marry quietly, and go away
North to live. Peter thought of his friend Farquhar. He wondered if
Farquhar's attitude would be just the same toward Cissie as it was
toward him.

"North," was the burden of the octoroon's dreams. They would go North to
Chicago. There were two hundred and fifty thousand negroes in Chicago, a
city within itself three times the size of Nashville. Up North she and
Peter could go to theaters, art galleries, could enter any church, could
ride in street-cars, railroad-trains, could sleep and eat at any hotel,
live authentic lives.

It was Cissie planning her emancipation, planning to escape her lifelong
disabilities.

"Oh, I'll be so glad! so glad! so glad!" she sobbed, and drew Peter's
head passionately down to her deep bosom.

CHAPTER V

Peter Siner walked home from the Dildine cabin that night rather
dreading to meet his mother, for it was late. Cissie had served
sandwiches and coffee on a little table in the arbor, and then had kept
Peter hours afterward. Around him still hung the glamour of Cissie's
little supper. He could still see her rounded elbows that bent softly
backward when she extended an arm, and the glimpses of her bosom when
she leaned to hand him cream or sugar. She had accomplished the whole
supper in the white manner, with all poise and daintiness. In fact, no
one is more exquisitely polite than an octoroon woman when she desires
to be polite, when she elevates the subserviency of her race into
graciousness.

However, the pleasure and charm of Cissie were fading under the
approaching abuse that Caroline was sure to pour upon the girl. Peter
dreaded it. He walked slowly down the dark semicircle, planning how he
could best break to his mother the news of his engagement. Peter knew
she would begin a long bill of complaints,--how badly she was treated,
how she had sacrificed herself, her comfort, how she had washed and
scrubbed. She would surely charge Cissie