The flies began a louder buzzing at the window. The heat had increased.
I looked through the open door and saw a man fall over, whether from
heat or cholera I could not tell. I was by now weary and faint. I said:
"I do not know what to say now. If we can agree, I mean if we are
allowed to agree, Zoe and I will have no trouble. I am getting faint.
And I shall come again." With that I arose and walked weakly from the
room.




CHAPTER VIII


What were my thoughts after all? Was I ashamed of my kinship with Zoe?
With this human being who had nursed me so tenderly through my illness?
Did I begrudge her the interest which she had, of right, with me in our
father's estate? She was as closely connected to him by ties of blood as
I was. These things I reflected upon as I felt course through me a deep
undercurrent of regret.

Was it my mother? Her face came before me as I had learned to know it
from her picture. Yes, that seemed to be it. My mother had not been
honored. How could my father for any ambition, for any exigency of
circumstance stoop to a marriage of this sort, with the memory of my
mother still fresh in mind, if not in heart? Ah! that was it! Did he
keep her in his heart? My grandmother's reticence about my father began
to fill in with significance of this sort. She knew that he had married
the octoroon not many years after my mother's death. She resented it and