“He’s a Southern Liberal—Vanderbilt University—the kind that wants both to keep us evil darkies in our place and get credit for being very tolerant—wants us to study the same things as a white man, but do it under the table. Firelock lives two doors from here in a dreadful old Noah’s Ark with trimmings like fungus—only place he could get, in the war shortage, poor gentleman!

“He was agitated when he found I was a neighbor. He’s used to having ‘darkies’ in the neighborhood, only they’re supposed to remain poor and humble and grateful. He looked down his nose at me when he first saw me. Then his kids got to playing with my Nora, and we got half acquainted, and the worst of it is, the poor devil likes me better than anybody else around here, and he can’t admit it.

“When I made over this place, I didn’t realize at first that I was going out for this Modern Style, which is, of course, a Freudian form of Puritanism, just in order to impress Firelock. The worst of it is, I succeeded, and every time I see him go by, he’s looking envious. Can you beat that for a low human motive on my part? And this room is so blasted chaste that I long for a golden-oak rocker under a picture of the old church by moonlight. I’m a Rotarian in professor’s clothing.

“No, that’s not true. (God, I am talking so much tonight! That’s because almost every evening I stay home.) I’m not in the least either an affable businessman or a heated race-agitator.

“I’d like to live in an ivory tower, play Bach, read Yeats and Melville, be an authority on the history of chemistry and alchemy instead of a plodding laboratory hack. But the white scholars won’t accept me, so I try to become an ardent race-crusader. But it’s a role, and I’m not a good actor.

“I have an affection for our friends tonight, but I find Clem too emphatic, Ryan too ridden by Communist Jesuitism, Sophie too imitative of the white Talking Women, and John and Mary, whom I honestly love, too smug. My notion of an agreeable evening would be to sit by the fireplace with George Moore, saying nothing. Oh, it’s not easy for me to bellow for our ‘rights’—even though I do emphatically believe that they are our rights.

“I think I’m telling you this so that you may know that neither we nor our propaganda are as simple as we seem. Nor are you!

“I think you have some quite special interest in the race. You certainly are not a philanthropic dabbler. What is it?”

–-Here’s the man that really might have something to tell me, that might become the friend I need. I don’t want to go on blabbing this, but–-

“Ash, I think possibly I have some Negro blood myself, way back.”

There was no sympathy from Ash nor surprise but only a quiet, “Oh. Well, perhaps it’s something to be proud of. Perhaps you’re in a better war now.”