Miss Hartley, all-seeing and instantly aware of a situation, as she had been quite aware that her patient had been conscious for some time before she herself had announced the fact, intervened, saying firmly: “I think it might be better if you didn’t try to talk to her now. She’s terribly sick and weak yet. She’s still got some fever and we mustn’t excite her or she’s liable to slip back. And we don’t want that, do we?”

No, the man, her husband, responded, they didn’t want that. Reluctantly he went from the room with a last look at Helga, who was lying on her back with one frail, pale hand under her small head, her curly black hair scattered loose on the pillow. She regarded him from behind dropped lids. The day was hot, her breasts were covered only by a nightgown of filmy crêpe, a relic of prematrimonial days, which had slipped from one carved shoulder. He flinched. Helga’s petulant lip curled, for she well knew that this fresh reminder of her desirability was like the flick of a whip.

Miss Hartley carefully closed the door after the retreating husband. “It’s time,” she said, “for your evening treatment, and then you’ve got to try to sleep for a while. No more visitors tonight.”

Helga nodded and tried unsuccessfully to make a little smile. She was glad of Miss Hartley’s presence. It would, she felt, protect her from so much. She mustn’t, she thought to herself, get well too fast. Since it seemed she was going to get well. In bed she could think, could have a certain amount of quiet. Of aloneness.

In that period of racking pain and calamitous fright Helga had learned what passion and credulity could do to one. In her was born angry bitterness and an enormous disgust. The cruel, unrelieved suffering had beaten down her protective wall of artificial faith in the infinite wisdom, in the mercy, of God. For had she not called in her agony on Him? And He had not heard. Why? Because, she knew now, He wasn’t there. Didn’t exist. Into that yawning gap of unspeakable brutality had gone, too, her belief in the miracle and wonder of life. Only scorn, resentment, and hate remained—and ridicule. Life wasn’t a miracle, a wonder. It was, for Negroes at least, only a great disappointment. Something to be got through with as best one could. No one was interested in them or helped them. God! Bah! And they were only a nuisance to other people.