He had never, of late, quite known what to do about his family, and he regarded them with a wry mixture of humor and deepest guilt. He dropped in to see his mother and Joan two or three times a week and found them becoming hermits. He told himself that it was not he but superstition that had made them “Negroes,” but the argument did not relieve him much nor relieve them at all.

His sister, Kitty Sayward, had nothing for him now but a “Yes, what is it?” One member of the family, Cousin Pat Saxinar, had taken the whole business adventurously, perhaps gladly. She had gone to live in a settlement-house in the Southwest End, and was busy there and seemingly content—a good woman as only a good woman can be good.

But Neil had to avoid Brother Robert’s house, because of the resentment of his sister-in-law, Alice, backed by her brother Harold W. Whittick. She was a bad woman as only a good woman can be bad. In March, she sued Robert for divorce, for cruelty, humiliation, and deceit in not having, before their marriage, told her that he was “colored.”

When Neil brought the news to Vestal, she hesitated. She did not look so disgusted as a man would have liked, but finally she achieved:

“Oh, well, Alice always was one of these what-do-I-get-out-of-it wives. And all her relatives were hammering at her to leave him. I know. My father and sister act as if I were a traitor to them because I don’t leave you. But so far, I’ve pounded them down. I can’t seem to get you out of my heart and soul and flesh. Oh, Neil!”

It was like one of the moments early in marriage when, without preliminary, they had suddenly wanted each other. He could feel the intensity in her, and while her eyes were smiling on him, utterly concentrated on him, she panted and her lips were slightly open. He moved close to her, and the two bodies pressed together, as though they had wills of their own.

He knew that she had unconsciously eaten up the myth that all Negroes, even deskmen and strained and nervous scholars, are superior sexual animals and that her renewed passion was all self-deception, that she was being violated by a son of Xavier Pic who did not really exist. But he could not feel that this was the moment for disquisitions on psychology, as he kissed her and she slowly sighed.

* * * * *

If she was going to be loyal, he thought, she must take her place with Martha Davis and Corinne Brewster. With a complete wife, an adoring child, a friend like Ash, and with Vestal and Martha become friends, what more could a man have?

He advanced his desire to have Ash and Martha here for dinner. Vestal moved uneasily. “Do you think that would be wise? I have no doubt they’re very fine people, but wouldn’t they be embarrassed? Would it be kind to them?”