man's shock, a notion he had picked
up in Boston, because it happens frequently among village negroes, and
among them it holds as little significance as children begging one
another for bites of apples.

Peter thought over his bank balance, then started toward a chest of
drawers where he kept his checkbook.

"Cissie, if I can he of any service to you in a substantial way, I'll be
more than glad to--"

She put out a hand and stopped him; then talked on in justification of
her determination to go away.

"I just can't endure it any longer, Peter." She shuddered again. "I
can't stand Niggertown, or this side of town--any of it. They--they have
no _feeling_ for a colored girl, Peter, not--not a speck!" She rave
a gasp, and after a moment plunged on into her wrongs: "When--when one
of us even walks past on the street, they--they whistle and say a-all
kinds of things out loud, j-just as if w-we weren't there at all. Th-
they don't c-care; we're just n-nigger w-women." Cissie suddenly began
sobbing with a faint catching noise, her full bosom shaken by the
spasms; her tears slowly welling over. She drew out a handkerchief with
a part of its lace edge gone, and wiped her eyes and cheeks, holding the
bit of cambric in a ball in her palm, like a negress, instead of in her
fingers, like a white woman, as she had been taught. Then she drew a
deep breath, swallowed, and became more composed.

Peter stood looking in helpless anger at this representative of all
women of his race.

"Cissie, that's street-corner scum--the dirty sewage--"

"They make you feel naked," went on Cissie in the monotone that succeeds
a fit of weeping, "and ashamed--and afraid." She blinked her eyes to
press out the undue moisture, and looked at Peter as if asking what else
she could do about it than to go away from the village.

"Will it be any better away from here?" suggested Peter, doubtfully.

Cissie shook her head.

"I--I suppose not, if--if I go alone."

"I shouldn't think so," agreed Peter, somberly. He started to hearten
her by saying white women also underwent such trials, if that would be a
consolation; but he knew very well that a white woman's hardships were
as nothing compared to those of a colored woman who was endowed with any
grace whatever.

"And besides, Cissie," went on Peter, who somehow found himself arguing
against the notion of her going, "I hardly see how a decent colored
woman gets around at all. Colored boarding-houses ar