"Cissie, just a moment ago you were complaining of the insults you meet everywhere. I believe if I can spread my ideas, Cissie, that even a pretty colored girl like you may walk the streets without being subjected to obscenity on every corner." His tone unconsciously patronized Cissie's prettiness with the patronage of the male for the less significant thing, as though her ripeness for love and passion and children were, after all, not comparable with what he, a male, could do in the way of significantly molding life. Cissie lifted her head and dried her eyes. "So you aren't going to marry me, Peter?" Woman-like, now that she was well into the subject, she was far less embarrassed than Peter. She had had her cry. "Why--er--considering this work, Cissie--" "Aren't you going to marry anybody, Peter?" The artist in Peter, the thing the girl loved in him, caught again that Messianic vision of himself. "Why, no, Cissie," he said, with a return of his inspiration of an hour ago; "I'll be going here and there all over the South preaching this gospel of kindliness and tolerance, of forgiveness of the faults of others." Cissie looked at him with a queer expression. "I'll show the white people that they should treat the negro with consideration not for the sake of the negro, but for the sake of themselves. It's so simple, Cissie, it's so logical and clear--" The girl shook her head sadly. "And you don't want me to go with you, Peter?" "Why, n-no, Cissie; a girl like you couldn't go. Perhaps I'll be misunderstood in places, perhaps I may have to leave a town hurriedly, or be swung over the walls, like Paul, in a basket." He attempted to treat it lightly. But the girl looked at him with a horror dawning in her melancholy face. "Peter, do you really mean that?" she whispered. "Why, truly. You don't imagine--" The octoroon opened her dark eyes until she might have been some weird. "Oh, Peter, please, please put such a mad idea away from you! Peter, you've been living here alone in this old house until you don't see things clearly. Dear Peter, don't you _know?_ You can't go out and talk like that to white folks and--and not have some terrible thing happen to you! Oh, Peter, if you would only marry me, it would cure you of such wildness!" Involuntarily she got up, holding out her arms to him, offering herself to his needs, with her frightened eyes fixed on his. It made him exquisitely uncomfortable again. He made a little sound designed to comfort and reassure her. He would do very well. He was something of a diplomat in his way. He had got along with the boys in Harvard very well indeed. In fact, he was rather a man of the world. No need to worry about him, though it was awfully sweet of her. Cissie picked up her handkerchief with its torn edge, which she had laid on the table. Evidently she was about to go. "I surely don't know what will become of me," she said, looking at it.