ed with a
wagon being driven by a white man. I saw the whole of it. The white man
was at fault. Yet he began to curse the negro, who laughingly spoke the
truth, that the white man had suddenly veered. With that a man,
apparently an officer of some sort, stepped from a patrol box carrying a
rifle and with an oath and a vile epithet commanded the negro to drive
on. And he did quickly and without returning a word. There was something
about the injustice of this that aroused my resentment. It was a
partiality that had nothing to do with the circumstances, but only with
the persons.

I visited the slave market and again saw the auctioning of human
beings, some as light of color as Zoe and of as much breeding. Again I
began to speculate on Zoe's future. What would become of her? How would
her fate tangle itself with mine? If Douglas had taken an impetus in
life from his uncle's failure to educate him, what direction had my life
been given by my father's marriage and Zoe? Already I had killed a man
for Zoe's sake; and I had been rejected by Dorothy because of Zoe, or
because of the circumstances which Zoe had created around my life.

Wherever I wandered on Canal Street, on the wharves, in the French
quarter, out to the battlefield where Jackson had won a victory over
Packenham, Dorothy was habitually in my thoughts. But always a door
closed against any communication with her; anything to be done for her
as a remembrance of her generosity; any step to be taken toward making
whole what I conceived to be our wounded friendship. Should I write
Dorothy? But what? So many exquisite things in the shop windows: jewels,
artistries of silver and gold. How I longed to select something for
Dorothy! But the door was closed against it. In the antique shops lovely
tables, chests, writing desks! If I could only buy many of such things
for our home--Dorothy's and mine. But was that home to be? The door
softly closed.

And thus I went about the city. It was so colorful, so gay, so
continental, so unlike anything I had ever dreamed of. And all the while
I was trying to order my thoughts, wondering what I should do. And if
ever Douglas in his political ambitions got entangled, to his own
undoing, with this mass of human beings, white and black, moving about
the carcass of life, what was to be my fate, both on the score of my
individual lot, and as one of the units in this racial hostility, and
the political and economic forces that generated i