spoke low, almost in a whisper, looking about him.

"No," was the answer.

"Wouldn't it be easier?"

"Perhaps." And then with a touch of annoyance, "You know how I hate to
talk."

"But I wouldn't marry him----"

"Of course!" Hertha stopped playing with her handkerchief and clasped
her hands together. "If I decide to marry him of course I'll tell. But I
haven't decided, I can't seem to decide!"

Tom looked at her flushed face and said in his slowest, most comforting
tone: "What you got to hurry for? Can't a man wait for a girl to take
her time? He ain't worth much if he can't."

"But don't you see," Hertha said excitedly, "I can't wait and wait, I've
got to decide what I'm going to do. If I have to support myself all the
rest of my life I ought to know whether I'm going to be a secretary or
not. And then it's easy enough to say to take your time about deciding
whether you like a man, but Dick Brown keeps taking things so for
granted. And then, just when he seems quite nice, he'll break out with
something about the 'niggers' that makes me so angry I can't bear to
speak to him again."

"That ain't the worst kind though." Tom spoke with emphasis, a grim look
settling about his big mouth. "You can face the one that hates you. The
worst is the skulking kind that looks sweet and friendly and acts the
devil behind your back."

Again Hertha heard him flay the man to whom she had so unreservedly
given her love, and again she shrank from his bitter words. But sitting
there in the church, with the homely symbols of religious life about
her, with the sun streaming through the crude stained-glass windows, she
saw clearly the danger and the sin from which she had escaped. And she
saw too that Tom, her young but manly brother, would hate with an
animal-like intensity the man who should dare to do her an injury. She
listened with deepened respect to what he went on to say.

"You can't make a Georgia cracker like Negroes, Hertha, not if you was
to work on him all your life. If you find you get to love him, tell him
everything and then let it drop. There ain't no good in going over
things. Up here in the North nobody thinks much about folks' past,
they're too busy. If he's good to you, and works hard and plays square,
there ain't no need for you to worry because he can't see like you do.
He ain't good enough for you, of course. No man is. But a husband ain't
to be judged by his opinions on the race question."

He touched her