“No, sir. God and I are on the best of terms; and He has never mentioned you to me.”

“Have you quite given in to madness, my child?” he asked in tones of murderous pity.

“I am not your child. I am my father’s—and, of course, my mother’s too.”

“Why then do you not weep for her?”

“Perhaps God has seen fit to comfort me. Again I say: Good day, sir.”

“Wait.”

“No, sir. Do not you wait—upon me, that is.” She opened the door wide, and when he continued to ignore the gesture, she shoved him, which so surprised the man that he did actually allow her to propel him from the room, after which she slammed the door and bolted it.

Selma did not extend such behavior to her family; nor, it is true, did they provoke her to do it. She went on her walks with Pauline just as she had long done. She nodded politely to those she passed. But she would not stop in her mother’s office to look upon her mother’s corpse. When Lovey insisted that she must, she said, “No, Lovey. I must not.”

“You’re an unfeeling child!” Lovey said passionately.

“She was wrong,” Selma answered simply. “She was very, and always, wrong. You look at her if it gives you comfort or amusement. It gives me neither.”

Sarah went to Selma’s room and talked quietly to her, asking her to attend the funeral. She listened politely and then shook her head. “If I cannot be true, I shall at any rate not be entirely false.”

“Please, dear Selma. You don’t have to do anything. Simply be there.”

“Being there, or anywhere, is not simple for me. Let them think me ‘simple.’ They do anyhow. That is our joke.” She turned to Pauline, who looked up at her and smiled. Selma went behind Pauline’s chair and, bending, hugged her and the chair she sat in. She looked back at Sarah. “Pauline is no longer a slave, you know. Mama freed her when she died.”

Sarah showed surprise. “I made her promise. Soon after that time they took the scissors away from me. Before you came. Dear Sarah! I’m glad you came. I hope that you are still glad. I hope that you will never, never be sorry that you married Beulah Land.”

“Do you mean to say Aunt Deborah really has made Pauline legally free?”

“Yes’m,” Pauline said. “I saw the paper it’s on.”

“She can come and go as she will,” Selma said. “Now we shall see if she goes, or if she stays.”

“I’ll stay—you know I’ll stay!” Pauline addressed the words to Selma hotly, even harshly, as if it were something they had argued, and as if she had forgotten that Sarah was present.