"Then you have some friends in the South whom you can turn to now, haven't you?" The question was asked in a bright voice as though hoping to bring something of cheer to the listener. But Hertha with a shake of her head turned away and again looked into the street. "Have you quarreled? Somehow I can't think of you as quarreling, but I know how clans battle in the South. Did something occur to make you angry before you left? If that's so, you'll soon make it up and everything will be right again." Hertha breathed fast. "I can't see them any more," she whispered. "Tell me why. Perhaps I can see some way to make things right." "You? Why, it's people like you and Dick who separate us!" "What do you mean?" The woman rose and in the darkness tried to peer into the girl's face. "What have Dick and I to do with it?" She groped for some clue to this enigmatic statement. What a ridiculous thing to say. What indeed had she and Dick to do with it? What unless that they were southerners? And then there flashed before her eyes a paragraph in one of the southern newspapers that she was always reading, a half-dozen lines telling of a girl hidden among the Negroes, later to receive money and a name. She saw the column in the paper, at the top of the page to the right, where the extraordinary story stood. She had a poor memory but some things she visualized unconsciously but unforgettably, and this had been one. She could see every word now, as though she were reading it, except the name. "What have Dick and I to do with all this?" she repeated with an attempt at a laugh. "We don't believe in separating families. But it wasn't your own family of whom you were speaking, was it? Didn't they do anything for you?" "Yes," Hertha answered. "When my grandfather died last October he left me two thousand dollars." "Ah!" That was all. The southern woman stood clutching a chair, her head reeling, the floor seeming to move beneath her feet. She was face to face with the incredible tale that her memory told her she must credit as the truth. The mystery then that surrounded Dick's princess, his beautiful lady to whom he gave his humble devotion, was humiliating and sordid. Disgrace, hidden by a life among Negroes. Worst of all, the smut of the blacks upon her since she desired to be with them again. This was the reason she had been so angry at Dick when he had raged against "niggers." She had lived with them in their dark alleys, she had eaten and slept with the kinky-haired slave-race!