“How could you take any interest in the fussing of us local busy-bodies? Our sign is ‘For colored only,’ and that lets you out, Captain.”

–-Don’t say it! Don’t tell her you’re colored! Shut up! Don’t say anything! You’ve already told Ash and the Woolcapes—too many. Wait now, wait!

And with that he babbled, “That lets me in, Sophie, because I’ve discovered, here recently, that I’m part colored.”

Her mouth stayed open, her fingers, like brown reeds, stayed motionless in air, holding a cigarette, her breast pulsed, and then her astonishment deepened into a look of tragic commiseration for him. The nurse who had been a small-town-neighborhood girl was tenderly concerned for him, but it was the Broadway singer who spoke:

“No foolin’?”

* * * * *

He heard himself discussed, genially but firmly.

“Why, you smart little devil,” crowed Sophie, “to think that you passed and got away with it, and I never guessed!”

“But I didn’t know till just recently, I tell you!”

“Really he didn’t,” said Ash, like a schoolmaster.

“Come off it!” Sophie gloated. “How could you help feeling that rhythm, little Neil? Why, I tell you, when you’re black, you’re in the groove, you’re in the grove, you got reet, you got meat, you got feet, you can feel that ole mumbo-jum right out of Africa zizzing right through you!”

“That’s enough, Sophie!” from Ash.

“Well, you get the idea, anyway. Maybe I was trying to strut a little Harlem stuff, but honest to God, I don’t see how anybody could have Congo genes in him and think he belonged to those hot-fisted, cold-hearted freaks that call themselves the white race! Anyway, congratulations, pal!”

“Stop it!” said Ash. “Neil, her jungle blood is pure fake, and so is her aversion to the whites—a heterogeneous group with many virtues. Sophie is a conscientious uplifter and record-keeper. But–-”

There was a “But” in everything Ash and Sophie said—not in what Martha said, because Martha didn’t say anything. The nearer Neil came to them, the more complex they seemed in their dual attitude toward him as a friend to be protected and as a convert to be exploited as publicity for the race. Without much reference to his feelings, they speculated whether “Even though it might be hard—just a little hard—just at first—might it not be a good thing if you did come out frankly as a Negro?”

But they thought they might let him off for a while.