Rastus tried to avoid Ruth. Next to Springer he was the worst beat man in town. When he saw Ruth enter one door of the president's office he would go out the other door. If he was in the banking room near the part of the room where she entered he immediately had business over on the other side of the room. It was almost noon when she met him face to face in one of the doors. "How are you, Rastus?" she said and then added, "Haven't been visited by any more Kluxers, have you?" "No'em, I ain't. You all thought you had a good joke on me, but I ain't sech an ignoranimus as what you all might think. I spicioned all the time that it was you, Miss Babcock." "If you suspected all the time that it was I, why did you become so frightened?" "Me sca'ed! Well, I guess not. When you all stepped out from behind that elevator I says to myself that's Miss Babcock tryin' to play a joke on me and I says I'll have to hep her to have a little fun, so I jest 'tended like I'se sca'ed, jest to please you, Miss Ruth." "Is that so, Rastus?" "'Deed, it is. I'se a good spo't, I is." "I thank you very much for the pleasure afforded me," she said, laughing. "Yas, 'em, you's welcome, but I ain't gwine to give you sech pleasure no mo'." "That's all right, Rastus. I consider that you have made your full contribution." It was the middle of the afternoon. Ruth had not been busy for a half-hour. She had been reading a novel. It was a story of a girl who was about to marry a man who was in every respect a cultured gentleman--intelligent and refined in thought, dignified in manner, and of magnetic personality. A few weeks before the date set for the wedding the girl received a shock. She was informed that the man whom she was about to marry was one-sixteenth negro. She was furious and could scarcely restrain her hands from clutching the throat of her informant. "It's a lie, it's a lie!" she shouted. She was sure that the story had been invented by a jealous rival who wished to torment her. The next time she was with her lover she could not but think of this. She thought that she saw a slight olive tint to the skin, that there were dark circles at the base of his finger nails and that his nose was slightly flat and nostrils a little broad. Surely she imagined these things. She continued to worry until the man persuaded her to tell him the cause of her distress. The man admitted that it was the truth and offered to release her from the engagement. The author then shows a great conflict in the mind of the girl between social standards and love. In the end love triumphed and the girl married the man with the strain of colored blood in his veins. When Ruth reached this point in the story she threw the book violently on the floor and exclaimed, "Rot, rot, that makes me sick!" "That's treating the book rough." She turned and saw Pearl Gardner, one of the bookkeepers, standing in the door. "Come in, Pearl, and have a chair."