Now that Cissie had pointed out this universal rule, Peter saw it very clearly.  And Peter suspected that beneath this rough classification, and conditioning it, lay a plexus of obscure mental and physical reactions set up by the relations between husband and wife.  It might very well be there was a difference between the actual cerebral and nervous structure of a married man and that of a single man.

At any rate, after these reflections, Peter now felt sure that marriage would cure him of his mission; but how had Cissie known it?  How had she struck out so involved a theory, one might say, in the toss of a head?  The more Peter thought it over the more extraordinary it became.  It was another one of those explosive ideas which Cissie, apparently, had the faculty of creating out of a pure mental vacuum.

All this philosophy aside, Cissie’s appearance just in the nick of his inspiration, her surprising proposal of marriage, and his refusal, had accomplished one thing:  it had committed Peter to the program he had outlined to the girl.

Indeed, there seemed something fatalistic in such a concatenation of events.  Siner wondered whether or not he would have obeyed his vision without this added impulse from Cissie.  He did not know; but now, since it had all come about just as it had, he suspected he would have been neglectful.  He felt as if a dangerous but splendid channel had been opened before his eyes, and almost at the same instant a hand had reached down and directed his life into it.  This fancy moved the mulatto.  As he got himself ready for bed, he kept thinking: 

“Well, my life is settled at last.  There is nothing else for me to do.  Even if this should end terribly for me, as Cissie imagines, my life won’t be wasted.”

Next morning Peter Siner was awakened by old Rose Hobbett thrusting her head in at his door, staring around, and finally, seeing Peter in bed, grumbling: 

“Why is you still heah, black man?”

The secretary opened his eyes in astonishment.

“Why shouldn’t I be here?”

“Nobody wuz ‘speckin’ you to be heah.”  The crone withdrew her head and vanished.

Peter wondered at this unaccustomed interest of Rose, then hurried out of bed, supposing himself late for breakfast.

A dense fog had come up from the river, and the moisture floating into his open windows had dampened his whole room.  Peter stepped briskly to the screen and began splashing himself.  It was only in the midst of his ablutions that he remembered his inspiration and resolve of the previous evening.  As he squeezed the water over his powerfully molded body, he recalled it almost impersonally.  It might have happened to some third person.  He did not even recall distinctly the threads of the logic which had lifted him to such a Pisgah, and showed him the whole South as a new and promised land.  However, he knew that he could start his train of thought again, and again ascend the mountain.