allied, if she strove to keep him at love's portal,
some time he might not be there when she turned from her path to make
her way among the orange trees. If that should happen, if he should
neglect her, she would die of angry shame. Within her nature there was
modesty and self-effacement, but also pride that could not brook a
slight. She had never wooed; it had been he who had called, beckoning
her from her place among the cabins in the pines. She had not given a
glance or said a word to draw him from his favored place; he had come
because he loved her beauty and her shy reserve. To hold him and yet not
to sacrifice herself. This was the problem, when fear crept into her
heart.

She had pushed it from her day after day, but she could not wholly
ignore it; and this autumn morning as she sat in church, seemingly
intent upon the preacher's word, she told herself that she must decide
what she was willing to give. He had pleaded with her to meet him that
night within the orange grove, promising to wait for her near the
cypress where her world met his. His passion was in the ascendant; he
begged her to trust him, to give herself to his keeping.

"An' de mantle ob Elijah was blue wid de blue ob de eternal heaben,"
cried out the preacher, "an' de linin' was rose wid de blood ob de
Lamb."

Could she go? Why did the world give her such a terrible problem? Why,
why was she colored! She felt a momentary revulsion to be listening to
an ignorant preacher amid these clumsy black folk. It was wicked that a
few drops of Negro blood forced her to this seat when she should be
yonder with the white people where the clergyman read the beautiful
service of the Church of England. Why was she not at Lee Merryvale's
side? As Ellen had said, she was no maid; she was his equal, and only
those drops of colored blood kept her here. No, not the drops of blood,
but the hideous morality of a cruel race.

But the world was here as the white people had made it, and you had to
accept it and then decide what you should do. Perhaps he was holding the
hymnal now and Miss Witherspoon was singing with him from the same book.
There would always be some one like that to come between him and
herself. Always a white face, but no whiter than her own; always a world
that claimed him and despised her. But if she gave herself to him, if
she trusted that he would love and protect her as he so passionately
promised; if she left mother and sister and brother for his