“I returned to acting and appeared with various companies under my old name, Mrs. Lauretta Savage. I had to give Shakespeare up because I couldn’t seem to remember all the lines exactly as he wrote them, and people in the audience know the plays so well they will even venture to correct one during a performance—” As she saw a look of impatience sweep Sarah’s face, she went on quickly. “I’ve acted, and to much acclaim, in contemporary comedies, American and English. There have been very nice parts for me since I forsook the ingenue roles. Well, since the war began—and I realize now for several months before that—there have been difficulties. I am Southern: my voice has what they call the Southern accent.” She paused, thinking. “Of course, I put down a large part of what happened in Philadelphia to the jealousy of another actress in the company whose husband had begun to pay more than casual attentions to me—unwelcome and unencouraged, I assure you. But one does not like to be cruel or rude. Well, one night ten days ago we were performing at the Walnut Street Theatre a play called Fashion by Anna Cora Mowatt. I had entered the scene but two minutes, and spoken my speeches on the proper cues, when there was a cry from the gallery: ‘She is a Southern spy!’ That woman I spoke of had hired someone to do it, of course. We tried to go on with the play. But in the middle of my next speech there came again the self-same cry from the gallery: ‘Southern spy!’ I paused, not knowing whether to go back and take the speech over again or— Then someone else took up the cry, and then another, until the entire gallery seemed to be hissing and roaring: ‘Southern spy! Spy! Spy! Spy!’ The play could not continue. The curtain was brought down, the theatre by then a savage mob. It was all the policemen could do to keep them from pouring backstage. I had scarcely reached my dressing room when the company manager arrived to say I was discharged.”

“Monstrous! Hateful!”

“Well, I don’t know,” Lauretta said in a suddenly reasonable tone. “I could not entirely blame him. Feelings were high, and there had been an occasional mutter before we played in Philadelphia. What about your pickles?”

“Never mind,” Sarah said. “Myrtis will go on with them if I do not come.”

Lauretta continued. “I was sitting alone when there was a knock at the door. At first I thought it was that woman come to jeer at me, but when I asked who was there, a voice said, ‘Roman Kendrick!’”

“Roman!”

“Yes. Roman Kendrick, he said. Of course, they take the name of their masters when they go free, don’t they?”

“Roman has every right to the name of Kendrick,” Sarah said. “He is Leon’s son.”

“But he’s a darky.”