hing,
and yet was quite unable to resist the comparison.

And then, too, she had referred again to her sin of peculation. A woman
enjoys confessions from a man. A man's sins are mostly vague, indefinite
things to a woman, a shadowy background which brings out the man in a
beautiful attitude of repentance; but when a woman confesses, the man
sees all her past as a close-up with full lighting. He has an intimate
acquaintance with just what she's talking about, and the woman herself
grows shadowy and unreal. Men have too many blots not to demand
whiteness in women. By striking some such average, nature keeps the race
a going moral concern.

So Peter, as he stood looking down on the woman who was asking him to
marry her, was filled with as unhappy and as impersonal a tenderness as
a born brother. He recalled the thoughts which had come to him when he
saw Cissie passing his window. She was not the sort of woman he wanted
to marry; she was not his ideal. He cast about in his head for some
gentle way of putting her off, so that he would not hurt her any
further, if such an easement were possible.

As he stood thinking, he found not a pretext, but a reality. He stooped
over, and put a hand lightly on each of her arms.

"Cissie," he said in a serious, even voice, "if I should ever marry any
one, it would be you."

The girl paused in her sobbing at his even, passionless voice.

"Then you--you won't?" she whispered in her arms.

"I can't, Cissie." Now that he was saying it, he uttered the words very
evenly and smoothly. "I can't, dear Cissie, because a great work has
just come into my life." He paused, expecting her to ask some question,
but she lay silent, with her face in her arms, evidently listening.

"Cissie, I think, in fact I know, I can demonstrate to all the South,
both white and black, the need of a better and more sincere
understanding between our two races."

Peter did not feel the absurdity of such a speech in such a place. He
patted her arm, but there was something in the warmth of her flesh that
disturbed his austerity and caused him to lift his hand to the more
impersonal axis of her shoulder. He proceeded to develop his idea.

"Cissie, just a moment ago you were complaining of the insults you meet
everywhere. I believe if I can spread my ideas, Cissie, that even a
pretty colored girl like you may walk the streets without being
subjected to obscenity on every corner." His tone unconsciously
patronized C