. Whether wisely or not, she had
chosen the position of a working girl in this, her new life, and the
doors of social intercourse that might, as a student, have been ajar had
she gone with Miss Witherspoon, were now closed.

Nevertheless, the splendor of the shop did make its impression upon her
and she felt that her aristocratic lineage became her as she walked
among its beautiful and costly things. "Now remember," she would say to
herself each day as she entered, "you are Hertha Ogilvie, Miss Ogilvie
of Florida. Your grandfather was a distinguished judge and left you
money, and after his death you came to New York to live." So far, so
good; but she must have a fuller story if she were to satisfy the
natural questions of her friends. Kathleen had respected her reserve,
for which she was most grateful, but if she saw Richard Brown again, and
accepted him in her life, he would want to know a great deal. Southern
folk were always talking about personal affairs with a kindly, active
curiosity, and there was little hope that a short sojourn in the North
would cure any one of them of such a trait. Yes, she must build up an
unreal past in which she moved among strange people, a white child
unknown even to herself. To have told her life as she had lived it, with
its strange and dramatic change from one race to another, was repugnant
to her. It was partly to escape the curious glances, the whispered
remarks about her appearance--"Yes, one could see she might have been
taken for a Negro, that curly hair"--the inquisitive questions regarding
her bringing up among blacks, that she had turned from the Boston world
that Miss Witherspoon had prepared for her. But Hertha Williams found it
difficult to create a life story for Hertha Ogilvie and to carry it
through its normal vicissitudes and adventures for twenty-three years.
It was repugnant to her to conceive and carry out a lie; and as she
walked down one long aisle and up another, she had an annoying way of
forgetting her grandfather and the many years she had lived with him
(she made no effort to visualize other relatives) and of recalling her
own black people at home.

They should know, these dear people whom she could not forget, that
Christmas found her alive and well, but she would send no address and
would receive no welcome word in return. That was what they had meant.
Hertha Ogilvie's two feet were not yet planted firmly enough in the
white world for her to return, even fo