The head-barber, the girl cashier, the Negro bootblack, his #3 barber—had they guessed that he was a Negro, had they known it for years? Were they waiting for the proper time to threaten him, to blackmail him—waiting, lurking, laughing at him?

“Mighty hard to cut that curly hair of yours smooth, Captain,” said the barber.

Now what was he referring to? Curly hair. Kinky hair. Negro wool.

Was his barber, standing back of him, winking at the barber at the next chair? Why had he yanked a lock of hair that way? Was the inconceivable social night already drawing in, and the black winter of blackness?

With the most itching carefulness, Neil crept one hand out from under the drab sheet covering him, scratched his nose, let the hand drop into his lap, and so was able to study his nails again. Was it this mercury vapor light, or was there really a blue tinge in the halfmoons?

He wanted to jump from the chair, flee to his safe room—no, flee to yet-unknown Negro friends who would sympathize with him, hide him, protect him.

It was no elegant green-and-ivory barber chair but the electric chair from which he was finally released. In his room, he quivered:

–-Vestal’s always loved to run her fingers through my hair. Will she, if she finds out what kind of hair it is? Same color as my dad’s used to be, but his isn’t curly. What would Vestal think? She mustn’t find out, ever.

He thought constantly of new things, pleasant and customary, from which his status as Negro might bar him: Biddy’s adoration. The lordly Federal Club. Dances and stag-drinking at the Heather Country Club, where once he had been chairman of the Bengali pool tournament. His college fraternity. His career in the bank. His friendship with Major Rodney Aldwick.

He repeated a slice of English doggerel that Rod Aldwick used to quote with unction:

All the white man’s memories:
Hearths at eventide,
The twinkling lights of Christmas nights
And our high Imperial pride.

What had been his own picture, his own observations, of the Negroes?

–-Come on, you high Imperial white man, what are we? Let’s have it, Mister!

–-Well, the Negroes are all sullen and treacherous, like Belfreda.

–-Nonsense! Mac the porter isn’t and I’m not and I’m no longer so sure about Belfreda.

–-They’re all black, flat-nosed, puff-lipped.

He went to the mirror, and laughed.

–-What a lot I used to know that I didn’t know! What a clack-mouthed parrot I was! Quoting that fool of a Georgia doctor. Negroes not quite human, eh? Kingsblood, Congoblood, you deserve anything you get—if it’s bad enough. I think God turned me black to save my soul, if I have any beyond ledgers and college yells. I’ve got to say, “You’re as blind and mean and ignorant as a white man,” and that’s a tough thing to take, even from myself.

–-Oh, don’t be so prejudiced against the white people. No doubt there’s a lot of them who would be just as good as anybody else, if they had my chance of redemption.