And Helga, who was beginning to feel that the conversation had taken an impersonal and disappointing tone, was reassured and gave him her most sympathetic smile and said almost gently: “And now let’s talk about you. You’re still at Naxos?”

“Yes I’m still there. I’m assistant principal now.”

Plainly it was a cause for enthusiastic congratulation, but Helga could only manage a tepid “How nice!” Naxos was to her too remote, too unimportant. She did not even hate it now.

How long, she asked, would James be in New York?

He couldn’t say. Business, important business for the school, had brought him. It was, he said, another tone creeping into his voice, another look stealing over his face, awfully good to see her. She was looking tremendously well. He hoped he would have the opportunity of seeing her again.

But of course. He must come to see her. Any time, she was always in, or would be for him. And how did he like New York, Harlem?

He didn’t, it seemed, like it. It was nice to visit, but not to live in. Oh, there were so many things he didn’t like about it, the rush, the lack of home life, the crowds, the noisy meaninglessness of it all.

On Helga’s face there had come that pityingly sneering look peculiar to imported New Yorkers when the city of their adoption is attacked by alien Americans. With polite contempt she inquired: “And is that all you don’t like?”

At her tone the man’s bronze face went purple. He answered coldly, slowly, with a faint gesture in the direction of Helen Tavenor, who stood conversing gayly with one of her white guests: “And I don’t like that sort of thing. In fact I detest it.”

“Why?” Helga was striving hard to be casual in her manner.

James Vayle, it was evident, was beginning to be angry. It was also evident that Helga Crane’s question had embarrassed him. But he seized the bull by the horns and said: “You know as well as I do, Helga, that it’s the colored girls these men come up here to see. They wouldn’t think of bringing their wives.” And he blushed furiously at his own implication. The blush restored Helga’s good temper. James was really too funny.

“That,” she said softly, “is Hugh Wentworth, the novelist,3 you know.” And she indicated a tall olive-skinned girl being whirled about to the streaming music in the arms of a towering black man.4 “And that is his wife. She isn’t colored, as you’ve probably been thinking. And now let’s change the subject again.”

“All right! And this time let’s talk about you. You say you don’t intend to live here. Don’t you ever intend to marry, Helga?”