Ellen looked at the delicate face, at the slender hands, at the shy figure, and swallowed hard. "Sister," she said authoritatively, "the time has come for you to hold up your head. You've got to make your own way. You'll be lonely and frightened and you'll miss home, but you've got to do it. As for Mr. Lee, I'm pretty sure he won't bother you if you let him see you don't like it. He'll have to take a little time to find his bearings, now he knows you're white." "I don't want him around." "If he wants to be around he can see you one place as well as another. You can't stay forever in these few rooms." "Then you send me away?" Hertha turned to her former sister, her head up. "You're going to your lawyer, you're taking the name of Hertha Ogilvie, you're coming into two thousand dollars from your grandfather's estate; isn't that so?" "Yes." "Then, Hertha, haven't you gone away already? You know the South. You can't be both white and black." Hertha took down her hat from the shelf and put it on. It was a pretty white straw with a blue ribbon. She had trimmed it herself but the straw and the ribbon were a gift from Ellen. "I suppose I may come back to pack up my things?" she asked angrily. "Little sister, little sister!" Ellen cried. Throwing off the hat Hertha flung her arms around her sister's neck. "Let me stay just a little longer," she beseeched. "Tell him I will come after supper. Tell him that I am too ill to come now but that you will bring me later in the evening. Let me stay and have supper with you and Mammy and then you may take me to his house. I'll go with you but not with him." "Oh, you darling!" Ellen said, hugging her. "You're the truest! And I'm glad for you, I am, I am! You'll never forget, oh, I know you'll never forget! You know that black and white mean nothing, just nothing, that it's hearts and souls, it's whether people are mean or generous, whether they're kind or cruel, that counts. You'll never talk about 'cute niggers' the way the women do who come to my school. You won't think black people can't feel shame and mortification the same as white. You won't say the women are all immoral and the men are all----" "Oh, Ellen," Hertha cried, "I've said good-by to Tom!" She sat down at the window and shook as though she were ill. "I can't help loving him most. I love him the way you love me; I took care of him when he was a baby." "Yes, dear!" "Go and tell that man that I'm coming by and by with you, and let me stay here a while alone."