of her bad conduct. It was her
drinking that always made all the trouble for her, for that can never
be really covered over.

Jane's drinking was always growing worse upon her. Melanctha had tried
to do the drinking but it had no real attraction for her.

In the first year, between Jane Harden and Melanctha Herbert, Jane had
been much the stronger. Jane loved Melanctha and she found her always
intelligent and brave and sweet and docile, and Jane meant to, and
before the year was over she had taught Melanctha what it is that
gives many people in the world their wisdom.

Jane had many ways in which to do this teaching. She told Melanctha
many things. She loved Melanctha hard and made Melanctha feel it
very deeply. She would be with other people and with men and with
Melanctha, and she would make Melanctha understand what everybody
wanted, and what one did with power when one had it.

Melanctha sat at Jane's feet for many hours in these days and felt
Jane's wisdom. She learned to love Jane and to have this feeling very
deeply. She learned a little in these days to know joy, and she was
taught too how very keenly she could suffer. It was very different
this suffering from that Melanctha sometimes had from her mother and
from her very unendurable black father. Then she was fighting and
she could be strong and valiant in her suffering, but here with Jane
Harden she was longing and she bent and pleaded with her suffering.

It was a very tumultuous, very mingled year, this time for Melanctha,
but she certainly did begin to really understand.

In every way she got it from Jane Harden. There was nothing good or
bad in doing, feeling, thinking or in talking, that Jane spared her.
Sometimes the lesson came almost too strong for Melanctha, but
somehow she always managed to endure it and so slowly, but always with
increasing strength and feeling, Melanctha began to really understand.

Then slowly, between them, it began to be all different. Slowly now
between them, it was Melanctha Herbert, who was stronger. Slowly now
they began to drift apart from one another.

Melanctha Herbert never really lost her sense that it was Jane Harden
who had taught her, but Jane did many things that Melanctha now no
longer needed. And then, too, Melanctha never could remember right
when it came to what she had done and what had happened. Melanctha now
sometimes quarreled with Jane, and they no longer went about together,
and sometimes Melanct