h
the river-r for its Main Street. I know ever-r'thang that goes on,
through the cabin-boys an' cooks, an'--an'--you cerrtainly ar-re a dear-
r, Mrs. Siner-r," and thereupon, quite unexpectedly, she kissed Cissie.

So on about the second day down the river Cissie dropped her saddened
manner and became frankly, freely, and riotously happy. After the
fashion of village negresses, she insisted on helping Mrs. Higgman with
her work, and, incidentally, she cultivated Mrs. Higgman's Northern
accent. When the chambermaid was out on her errands and Cissie found a
moment alone with Peter, she would tweak his ear or pull his cheek and
provoke him to kiss her. Indeed, it was all the hot, shuddering little
laundry-room could do to contain the gay and bubbling Cissie.

Peter thought and thought, resignedly now, but persistently, how this
strange happiness that belonged to them both could be. He was content,
yet he felt he ought not to be content. He thought there must be
something base in himself, yet he felt that there was not. He drank the
wine of his honeymoon marveling.

On the morning before the _Red Cloud_ entered the port of Cairo
Mrs. Higgman was out of the cabin, and Peter stood at the little square
window, with his arm about Cissie's waist, looking out to the rear of
the steamer. A strong east wind blew the spray away from the glass, and
Peter could see the huge wheel covered with a waterfall thundering
beneath him. Back of the wheel stretched a long row of even waves and
troughs. Every seventh or eighth wave tumbled over on itself in a swash
of foam. These flashing stern waves strung far up the river. On each
side of the great waterway stretched the flat shores of Kentucky and
Ohio. Here and there over the broad clay-colored water moved other
boats--tow-boats, a string of government auto-barges, a snag-boat,
another packet.

Peter gave up his question. The curves of Cissie's form in his arm held
a sweetness and a restfulness that her maidenhood had never promised. He
felt so deeply sure of his happiness that it seemed strange to him that
he could not aline his emotions and his mind.

As Peter stood staring up the Ohio River, it occurred to him that
perhaps, in some queer way, the morals of black folk were not the morals
of white folk; perhaps the laws that bound one race were not the laws
that bound the other. It might be that white anathemas were black
blessings. Peter thought along this line peacefully for several