She glanced at her watch in surprise and arose hastily.

"Yes, with pleasure," she said moving away--at first very fast, and then
more and more slowly up the lane, with a puzzled look on her face.

She began to realize that in this pleasant little chat the fact of the
boy's color had quite escaped her; and what especially puzzled her was
that this had not happened before. She had been here four months, and
yet every moment up to now she seemed to have been vividly, almost
painfully conscious, that she was a white woman talking to black folk.
Now, for one little half-hour she had been a woman talking to a boy--no,
not even that: she had been talking--just talking; there were no persons
in the conversation, just things--one thing: Cotton.

She started thinking of cotton--but at once she pulled herself back to
the other aspect. Always before she had been veiled from these folk: who
had put the veil there? Had she herself hung it before her soul, or had
they hidden timidly behind its other side? Or was it simply a brute
fact, regardless of both of them?

The longer she thought, the more bewildered she grew. There seemed no
analogy that she knew. Here was a unique thing, and she climbed to her
bedroom and stared at the stars.




_Four_

TOWN