-and learned to think and feel like a white man. You--
you changed your code, Peter." She gave a little shaken sound, something
between a sob and a laugh. "I--I don't think th-that's very fair, Peter,
to--to go away an'--an' change an' come back an' judge us with yo' n-new
code." Cissie's precise English broke down.

Just then Peter's logic caught at a point.

"If you didn't know anything about my code, how do you know what I feel
now?" he asked.

She looked at him with a queer expression.

"I found out when you kissed me under the arbor. It was too late then."

She stood erect, with dismissal very clearly written in her attitude.
Peter walked out of the room.

CHAPTER VIII

With a certain feeling of clumsiness Peter groped in the dark hall for
his hat, then, as quietly as he could, let himself out at the door.
Outside he was surprised to find that daylight still lingered in the
sky. He thought night had fallen. The sun lay behind the Big Hill, but
its red rays pouring down through the boles of the cedars tinted long
delicate avenues in the dusty atmosphere above his head. A sharp chill
in the air presaged frost for the night. Somewhere in the crescent a boy
yodeled for his dog at about half-minute intervals, with the persistence
of children.

Peter walked a little distance, but finally came to a stand in the dust,
looking at the negro cabins, not knowing where to go or what to do.
Cissie's confession had destroyed all his plans. It had left him as
adynamic as had his mother's death. It seemed to Peter that there was a
certain similarity between the two events; both were sudden and
desolating. And just as his mother had vanished utterly from his reach,
so now it seemed Cissie was no more. Cissie the clear-eyed, Cissie the
ambitious, Cissie the refined, had vanished away, and in her place stood
a thief.

The thing was grotesque. Peter began a sudden shuddering in the cold.
Then he began moving toward the empty cabin where he slept and kept his
things. He moved along, talking to himself in the dusty emptiness of the
crescent. He decided that he would go home, pack his clothes, and
vanish. A St. Louis boat would be down that night, and he would just
have time to pack his clothes and catch it. He would not take his books,
his philosophies. He would let them remain, in the newspapered room,
until all crumbled into uniform philosophic dust, and the teachings of
Aristotle blew a