"I understand."

He looked uncertainly at the white drooping figure. The serenaders were repeating the chorus of the old song in low, sweet strains that floated over the lawn and stole through the house in weird ghost-like echoes. He returned to her chair and bent over her:

"You won't stop to change your dress, you'll get your hat and coat and go just as you are--at once?"

The brown head nodded slowly and he gazed at her tenderly:

"You've been a brave little girl to-night"--he lifted his hand to place it on her shoulder in the first expression of love he had ever given. The hand paused, held by the struggle of the feelings of centuries of racial pride and the memories of his own bitter tragedy. But the pathos of her suffering and the heroism of her beautiful spirit won. The hand was gently lowered and pressed the soft, round shoulder.

A sob broke from the lonely heart, and her head drooped until it lay prostrate on the table, the beautiful arms outstretched in helpless surrender.

Norton staggered blindly to the door, looked back, lifted his hand and in a quivering voice, said:

"I can never forget this!"

His long stride quickly measured the distance to the gate, and a loud cheer from the serenaders roused the girl from her stupor of pain.

In a moment they began singing again, a love song, that tore her heart with cruel power.

"Oh, G.o.d, will they never stop?" she cried, closing her ears with her hands in sheer desperation.

She rose, crossed slowly to the window and looked out on the beautiful moonlit lawn at the old rustic seat where her lover was waiting. She pressed her hand on her throbbing forehead, walked to the center of the room, looked about her in a helpless way and her eye rested on the miniature portrait of Tom. She picked it up and gazed at it tenderly, pressed it to her heart, and with a low sob felt her way through the door and up the stairs to her room.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE PARTING

Tom had grown impatient, waiting in their sheltered seat on the lawn for Helen to return. She had gone on a mysterious mission to see Minerva, laughingly refused to tell him its purpose, but promised to return in a few minutes. When half an hour had pa.s.sed without a sign he reconnoitered to find Minerva, and to his surprise she, too, had disappeared.

He returned to his trysting place and listened while the serenaders sang their first song. Unable to endure the delay longer he started to the house just as his father hastily left by the front door, and quickly pa.s.sing the men at the gate, hurried down town.

The coast was clear and he moved cautiously to fathom, if possible, the mystery of Helen's disappearance. Finding no trace of her in Minerva's room, he entered the house and, seeing nothing of her in the halls, thrust his head in the library and found it empty. He walked in, peeping around with a boyish smile expecting her to leap out and surprise him. He opened the French window and looked for her on the porch. He hurried back into the room with a look of surprised disappointment and started to the door opening on the hall of the stairway. He heard distinctly the rustle of a dress and the echo on the stairs of the footstep he knew so well.

He gave a boyish laugh, tiptoed quickly to the old-fashioned settee, dropped behind its high back and waited her coming.

Helen had hastily packed a travelling bag and thrown a coat over her arm.

She slowly entered the library to replace the portrait she had taken, kissed it and started with feet of lead and set, staring eyes to slip through the lawn and avoid Tom as she had promised.

As she approached the corner of the settee the boy leaped up with a laugh:

"Where have you been?"

With a quick movement of surprise she threw the bag and coat behind her back. Luckily he had leaped so close he could not see.

"Where've you been?" he repeated.

"Why, I've just come from my room," she replied with an attempt at composure.

"What have you got your hat for?"

She flushed the slightest bit:

"Why, I was going for a walk."

"With a veil--at night--what have you got that veil for?"

The boyish banter in his tones began to yield to a touch of wonder.

Helen hesitated:

"Why, the crowds of singing and shouting men on the streets. I didn't wish to be recognized, and I wanted to hear what the speakers said."

"You were going to leave me and go alone to the speaker's stand?"

"Yes. Your father is going to see you and I was nervous and frightened and wanted to pa.s.s the time until you were free again"--she paused, looked at him intently and spoke in a queer monotone--"the negroes who can't read and write have been disfranchised, haven't they?"

"Yes," he answered mechanically, "the ballot should never have been given them."

"Yet there's something pitiful about it after all, isn't there, Tom?" She asked the question with a strained wistfulness that startled the boy.

He answered automatically, but his keen, young eyes were studying with growing anxiety every movement of her face and form and every tone of her voice:

"I don't see it," he said carelessly.

She laid her left hand on his arm, the right hand still holding her bag and coat out of sight.

"Suppose," she whispered, "that you should wake up to-morrow morning and suddenly discover that a strain of negro blood poisoned your veins--what would you do?"

Tom frowned and watched her with a puzzled look:

"Never thought of such a thing!"

She pressed his arm eagerly:

"Think--what would you do?"

"What would I do?" he repeated in blank amazement.

"Yes."

His eyes were holding hers now with a steady stare of alarm. The questions she asked didn't interest him. Her glittering eyes and trembling hand did.

Studying her intently he said lightly:

"To be perfectly honest, I'd blow my brains out."