somehow she looked very
pathetic hurrying along in the cold, dim light of dawn. After she had
cooked the Arkwright breakfast, swept the Arkwright floors, dusted the
Arkwright furniture, she passed back toward Niggertown, somewhere near
nine. About eleven o'clock she went up to cook dinner, and returned at
one or two in the afternoon. Occasionally, she made a third trip to get
supper.

This was as exactly as Peter could predict the arrivals and departures
of Cissie, and the schedule involved a large margin of uncertainty. For
half an hour before Cissie passed she kept Peter watching the clock at
nervous intervals, wondering if, after all, she had gone by unobserved.
Invariably, he would move his work to a window where he had the whole
street under his observation. Then he would proceed with his indexing
with more and more difficulty. At first the paragraphs would lose
connection, and he would be forced to reread them. Then the sentences
would drop apart. Immediately before the girl arrived, the words
themselves grew anarchic. They stared him in the eye, each a complete
entity, self-sufficient, individual, bearing no relation to any other
words except that of mere proximity,--like a spelling lesson. Only by an
effort could Peter enforce a temporary cohesion among them, and they
dropped apart at the first slackening of the strain.

Strange to say, when the octoroon actually was walking past, Peter did
not look at her steadily. On the contrary, he would think to himself:
"How little I care for such a woman! My ideal is thus and so--" He would
look at her until she glanced across the yard and saw him sitting in the
window; then immediately he bent over his books, as if his stray glance
had lighted on her purely by chance, as if she were nothing more to him
than a passing dray or a fluttering leaf. Indeed, he told himself during
these crises that he had no earthly interest in the girl, that she was
not the sort of woman he desired,--while his heart hammered, and the
lines of print under his eyes blurred into gray streaks across the page.

One afternoon Peter saw Cissie pass his gate, hurrying, almost running,
apparently in flight from something. It sent a queer shock through him.
He stared after her, then up and down the street. He wondered why she
ran. Even when he went to bed that night the strangeness of Cissie's
flight kept him awake inventing explanations.

* * * * *

Non