own negro very
well, and all her life Melanctha wanted and respected gentleness
and goodness, and this man always gave her good advice and serious
kindness, and Melanctha felt such things very deeply, but she could
never let them help her or affect her to change the ways that always
made her keep herself in trouble.

Melanctha spent many of the last hours of the daylight with the
porters and with other men who worked hard, but when darkness came it
was always different. Then Melanctha would find herself with the,
for her, gentlemanly classes. A clerk, or a young express agent would
begin to know her, and they would stand, or perhaps, walk a little
while together.

Melanctha always made herself escape but often it was with an effort.
She did not know what it was that she so badly wanted, but with all
her courage Melanctha here was a coward, and so she could not learn to
understand.

Melanctha and some man would stand in the evening and would talk
together. Sometimes Melanctha would be with another girl and then it
was much easier to stay or to escape, for then they could make way for
themselves together, and by throwing words and laughter to each other,
could keep a man from getting too strong in his attention.

But when Melanctha was alone, and she was so, very often, she would
sometimes come very near to making a long step on the road that leads
to wisdom. Some man would learn a good deal about her in the talk,
never altogether truly, for Melanctha all her life did not know how to
tell a story wholly. She always, and yet not with intention, managed
to leave out big pieces which make a story very different, for when it
came to what had happened and what she had said and what it was that
she had really done, Melanctha never could remember right. The man
would sometimes come a little nearer, would detain her, would hold
her arm or make his jokes a little clearer, and then Melanctha would
always make herself escape. The man thinking that she really had world
wisdom would not make his meaning clear, and believing that she was
deciding with him he never went so fast that he could stop her when at
last she made herself escape.

And so Melanctha wandered on the edge of wisdom. "Say, Sis, why don't
you when you come here stay a little longer?" they would all ask
her, and they would hold her for an answer, and she would laugh,
and sometimes she did stay longer, but always just in time she made
herself escape.

Melanctha