"There weren't any exchange. Before he'd finished the car come. I reckon he was planning to have me give a wave of my hand and send the feller off the earth. What did you give him, Hertha? The kid thought I was a magician." "Oh, I just told him a story," Hertha answered vaguely, "and used your name. But what did Bob mean? Didn't he like Dick?" "Jealous, I reckon." Hertha laughed. "Well, I'll tell you about him," she declared, "I was coming to him when I spoke." Playing with her handkerchief, her mouth trembling sometimes as she talked, she seemed to Tom both nervous and tired. He had not thought she could so lose her old serenity. But he listened attentively as she told of her meetings with Dick in the library and at the park. As her story continued he grew to like the young southerner for his considerate and unselfish devotion. Looking at Hertha's too slender figure and at her restless hands he felt, as Dick so often felt, that she was not one who should be forced to battle with the world. And he knew, as Dick could not know, her utter loneliness. When he learned that the man was from Georgia he was not altogether unprepared for the close of Hertha's story, the quick breath and furious blush that came with the halting effort to tell of her lover's attitude toward the colored race. "Oh, I can guess," he said tolerantly, coming to her rescue. "I've heard that kind of man talk. Colored folks are all niggers to him and he ain't got no use for 'em. But lawdy, that don't amount to much." "But I think it does, Tom," Hertha said tremulously. "When he talks like that, I hate him." "Have you told him about yourself, Sister?" Tom inquired. He spoke low, almost in a whisper, looking about him. "No," was the answer. "Wouldn't it be easier?" "Perhaps." And then with a touch of annoyance, "You know how I hate to talk." "But I wouldn't marry him----" "Of course!" Hertha stopped playing with her handkerchief and clasped her hands together. "If I decide to marry him of course I'll tell. But I haven't decided, I can't seem to decide!" Tom looked at her flushed face and said in his slowest, most comforting tone: "What you got to hurry for? Can't a man wait for a girl to take her time? He ain't worth much if he can't." "But don't you see," Hertha said excitedly, "I can't wait and wait, I've got to decide what I'm going to do. If I have to support myself all the rest of my life I ought to know whether I'm going to be a secretary or not. And then it's easy enough to say to take your time about deciding whether you like a man, but Dick Brown keeps taking things so for granted. And then, just when he seems quite nice, he'll break out with something about the 'niggers' that makes me so angry I can't bear to speak to him again."