hese days before she was really
suited. It was almost a year that she wandered and then she met with
a young mulatto. He was a doctor who had just begun to practice. He
would most likely do well in the future, but it was not this that
concerned Melanctha. She found him good and strong and gentle and very
intellectual, and all her life Melanctha liked and wanted good and
considerate people, and then too he did not at first believe in
Melanctha. He held off and did not know what it was that Melanctha
wanted. Melanctha came to want him very badly. They began to know each
other better. Things began to be very strong between them. Melanctha
wanted him so badly that now she never wandered. She just gave herself
to this experience.

Melanctha Herbert was now, all alone, in Bridgepoint. She lived now
with this colored woman and now with that one, and she sewed, and
sometimes she taught a little in a colored school as substitute for
some teacher. Melanctha had now no home nor any regular employment.
Life was just commencing for Melanctha. She had youth and had learned
wisdom, and she was graceful and pale yellow and very pleasant, and
always ready to do things for people, and she was mysterious in her
ways and that only made belief in her more fervent.

During the year before she met Jefferson Campbell, Melanctha had tried
many kinds of men but they had none of them interested Melanctha very
deeply. She met them, she was much with them, she left them, she would
think perhaps this next time it would be more exciting, and always
she found that for her it all had no real meaning. She could now do
everything she wanted, she knew now everything that everybody wanted,
and yet it all had no excitement for her. With these men, she knew
she could learn nothing. She wanted some one that could teach her very
deeply and now at last she was sure that she had found him, yes she
really had it, before she had thought to look if in this man she would
find it.

During this year 'Mis' Herbert as her neighbors called her,
Melanctha's pale yellow mother was very sick, and in this year she
died.

Melanctha's father during these last years did not come very often to
the house where his wife lived and Melanctha. Melanctha was not
sure that her father was now any longer here in Bridgepoint. It
was Melanctha who was very good now to her mother. It was always
Melanctha's way to be good to any one in trouble.

Melanctha took good care of her mother.