In the background where she could see, yet not be seen, Hertha watched the congregation as it emerged from the church. It was a small group--the Merryvales and some dozen neighbors from up and down the river. She knew them all, and yet this morning they took on sinister significance. The stylishly dressed women, the men in their well-fitting clothes, the gestures and modulations of voice, these were not of her world. As they went down the path she saw one of the women beckon to Lee Merryvale, who turned, all attention, to listen to what she had to tell him. With head bent toward his companion, he walked on and at a turn of the path was gone. Soon their voices, too, died away and there was nothing left but the empty path and the endless murmur of the wind among the pines. Erect, head thrown back, hands clenched, the colored girl stood for a moment staring down the path. Her lips parted as though to cry out against the cruelty that denied her the right to walk among these white people, white herself, by the side of the man she loved. But no cry came, and presently her hands relaxed, her face resumed its pallor, and with drooping head she turned toward home. Always quiet, at the afternoon dinner her preoccupation was so noticeable that her mother, the dishes cleared away, tried to draw her from it. "Come an' sit wid me on de step, honey," she called. "You don' want ter go an' do mo' work like Ellen. I neber knowed a chile befo' so greedy. She can't help eatin' up oder folks' jobs. You come hyar an' talk ter yo' mammy." "You talk to me," Hertha said. "What woll I talk 'bout?" "Tell me about it again. Tell me about how I came to you." The mother gave a big happy laugh. "You allays likes dat story, don' you, honey? An' I likes it too. Reckon dis would hab been a poor home widout you was in it. Well, sit hyar an' I tell it ter yer, jes' as 'twas." Looking down on the little garden, gay with autumnal flowers, Hertha took the step below her mother's on the porch so that she might lean against her. As she sat there, listening to the rich drawling voice, she rested as she had not rested before that day. With mammy one felt safe. Both she and Tom had noticed it. "Well, honey, it were twenty-t'ree year ago las' September----" "The twenty-ninth," Hertha interrupted. "De twenty-nine. You' pappy, Ellen an' me, we gwine ter de church fer a celebration. We was spectin' ter git home early in de ebenin', but it done pour so we wait round till it were night. Den we see de rain weren't gwine ter stop, not fer t'ree 'fraid-cats, so we start off. My, how de trees shake in de roarin' wind. Ellen, she hung close ter daddy, an' once she give a lil' sniffle, like she want awful ter cry, but jes' wouldn't." "I know," Hertha broke in, "Ellen is like that now. If I'd been there, I'd have cried and daddy would have taken me in his arms, wouldn't he?"