Rack Riley offered, “I meant to kid the pants off you, Cap, but you’re all right. I guess you’ll have a mean time with the ofays. So what? I’ve had one, all my life! I’d like to see you stowing cargo, or pearl-diving!”

It is almost certain that Vestal supposed “pearl-diving” to mean diving for pearls. She replied firmly, “I’m sure he’ll do it splendidly. He’s such a wonderful swimmer.”

She wondered why they laughed so flatteringly.

They stayed not an hour. At farewell, Belfreda patted Vestal’s hand, and the troop of the gay enchanted went sliding off in Borus’s sumptuous car, with shrieks of “You two guys are okay! Come see us at the Jive.” Once, their people had plodded the Carolina roads while Massa galloped, but a Negro in a car goes as fast as a white man.

Neil crowed, “They’re roughnecks, but they’re fun. They’d be swell friends, if you ever needed them. Can’t you see why I take them seriously?”

Vestal examined him coldly. “Those clowns? My dear boy, have you gone quite mad?”

“I thought you rather liked them.”

“Well, I didn’t want our throats cut.”

“Oh, nonsense!” Neil protested. “They’re much decenter than Curtiss Havock, and much smarter.”

“Who isn’t! You mean to say you could ever tolerate the way that horrible Bugdoll leers? I could have him whipped! I’m not Southern, but I’m awful white.”

“Oh, I liked it as much as I do the way Eliot Hansen simpers at you and always manages to touch you! And Borus has courage. Some day we might be very glad to have a house next to him.”

“You might. Not me. I won’t be there!”

“No? Well, I think I’ll walk a few blocks before I turn in.”

He rather wanted to be unfaithful to his oppressive wife, as regularized young husbands often do when they are sorely puzzled, when they feel that new and’ surprising caresses of warmer arms might provide a rational explanation of everything. He very much wanted to telephone to Sophie Concord.

And so, after five minutes of cold air and loneliness, he came home and argued with Vestal till midnight.

February had come in, and the sidewalks were perilously icy under the shifty covering of snow. Cars stalled and slipped backward when they tried to run up the hills, and the chains about the tires as they hit the fenders flapped all day long in an irritable chorus.

In the Capital of the Nation, a few Southern Senators refused to let their fellow Titans even vote upon a bill to prevent employers from refusing jobs on the grounds of an applicant’s color.