“That would be all right,” said Lucian, while Neil found himself not liking to answer. The waiter demanded of him, “What about you, Brother?”

“All right.”

“You boys ought to like ‘em. Our best customers do!”

Or was the waiter merely friendly and untrained? Lucian looked annoyed, and Neil resolved:

–-I wouldn’t care, if I were alone. But I’ll never go with any of my white friends to a restaurant again and subject them to this embarrassment. And you can’t even explain it to them. They wouldn’t understand. They’d say “Why don’t you complain?”

* * * * *

They did not talk, till the end of lunch, of Negro lore, but of Diantha, consort of the newspaper-owner, Gregory Marl. With singular force and simplicity, Diantha tried to dominate all the polite arts in town, from the little theater to the Foreign Policy Association, and she might have succeeded if she could only have stopped after three cocktails.

(It is a fact that Neil found himself wondering if it was proper for him to discuss a white lady like this.)

Then Lucian blurted, “I know you’ve been avoiding the Federal Club. Why don’t you march right in there?”

“I’m not a member!”

“They couldn’t throw you out.”

“What would it prove?”

“I don’t know,” Lucian admitted. “Maybe it would prove something right against my whole argument for segregation, which is that there is an inherent difference between Nigras and whites. Oh, Neil, my good friend, you have led me into strange heresies, even though I scarcely know you. Maybe it’s just as well I don’t know you better. I might find myself a Rosicrucian or a sun-worshipper!”

Neil returned to the bank stepping high.

In mid-afternoon, Mr. Prutt called him in and said, with no fond fussing this time, “I don’t want you to ever cause talk again by going to lunch publicly with a white man. Will you give me your promise to that effect?”

“What? No! Certainly not!”

“I have been very generous, Neil, keeping you on, after the complaints from our depositors. And have you appreciated it? The other evening you went to the house of a colored man named Woolcape and met a group of Negro trouble-makers who are plotting to destroy our entire business system.”

Neil stood up. “If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. I resign.”

“That will be rather of a relief all round, Kingsblood, and I shall try to bear you no ill will for having taken advantage of our tolerance.” Mr. Prutt held out a dry hand to be shaken, but Neil sighed:

“That’s quite all right, sir, but I don’t like to shake hands with white men. Good day, sir.”

He looked for S. Ashiel Denver, to say good-bye. He saw him hiding in the vault.