“She’s the ‘lady’ who would like to help the ‘poor Negro,’ I believe,” Roman said drily.

“Don’t make fun.”

“Why not? What does she know?”

“She knows a good deal, and she has a good heart.”

“By which you mean she’s listened to lectures by abolitionists and no doubt subscribes to The Emancipator.”

“Don’t put on cynicism with me!”

“I’m not putting on anything,” Roman said. “This ‘lady’—”

“Eliza Truman,” Proctor said shortly. “You know her name.”

“—is concerned to do something about the ignorant Southern darky when he has escaped from his cruel master and found his way in rags and tears to her door.”

“She is going to start a school for free Negroes,” Proctor said.

“And for those with Georgia clay still between their toes, who will somehow contrive to crawl north.”

“Are you trying to make me angry?”

Roman shook his head. “I don’t need her. I’m beyond all that, thank you.”

“Do you feel nothing, no pity, no compassion for the—”

“My dear Proctor, I have a foot in each camp, as one might say. My mother, such as she was, was a slave.”

“She’s now a free woman.”

“And my father is master of one of those plantations from which Miss Truman so fervently hopes to recruit future pupils.”

“Does that father acknowledge you as his son?”

“You know he cannot.”

“I know he won’t, not even privately. Hasn’t and never will.”

“He made me free.”

“To soothe his vanity and conscience. Could he let his own flesh stay slave?”

“Many do. In any case, it was Sarah, my beautiful Sarah who set me free.”

“I know that. And you know I honor her for it.”

“I don’t only honor her for it; I adore her for it. She is the best woman that ever lived, the kindest, the most beautiful—the best. I would die for her.”

“She is a very rare one, I certainly agree.”

“And she did not set me free when she gave me the silver cuff links and a piece of paper on my twenty-first birthday. She made me free when she first touched me and talked to me. I was an ugly child without a friend. No one cared if I lived or died because I was only a deformed embarrassment.”

“You’ve paid her back with devotion, and with the school.”

“I can never ‘pay her back,’ Proctor.”

“Don’t you think you were owed something, that part of her goodness to you came perhaps from a sense of guilt?”

“If at first—only at first. You can’t shake what she did.”

“Nor shall I try. That is not my aim.” They were silent together a time, not touching. “Well,” Proctor said, “what are you going to do?”

“Do? I am doing. I am working and living. Here, now.”

“Could you ever think of leaving to make a life with me, somewhere else?”