The golden green of the first leaves darkened, and the plants sprang
forward steadily. Never before was such a magnificent beginning, a full
month ahead of other cotton. The rain swept down in laughing, bubbling
showers, and laved their thirsty souls, and Zora held her beating breast
day by day lest it rain too long or too heavily. The sun burned fiercely
upon the young cotton plants as the spring hastened, and they lifted
their heads in darker, wilder luxuriance; for the time of hoeing was at
hand.

These days were days of alternate hope and doubt with Bles Alwyn.
Strength and ambition and inarticulate love were fighting within him. He
felt, in the dark thousands of his kind about him, a mighty calling to
deeds. He was becoming conscious of the narrowness and straightness of
his black world, and red anger flashed in him ever and again as he felt
his bonds. His mental horizon was broadening as he prepared for the
college of next year; he was faintly grasping the wider, fuller world,
and its thoughts and aspirations.

But beside and around and above all this, like subtle, permeating ether,
was--Zora. His feelings for her were not as yet definite, expressed, or
grasped; they were rather the atmosphere in which all things occurred
and were felt and judged. From an amusing pastime she had come to be a
companion and thought-mate; and now, beyond this, insensibly they were
drifting to a silenter, mightier mingling of souls. But drifting,
merely--not arrived; going gently, irresistibly, but not yet at the
realized goal.

He felt all this as the stirring of a mighty force, but knew not what
he felt. The teasing of his fellows, the common love-gossip of the
school yard, seemed far different from his plight. He laughed at it and