“Then we’ll go,” he said soothingly.  “It’s decided—­tomorrow.  And we’ll have a perfectly lovely wedding trip,” he planned cheerfully, to draw her mind from her mood.  “On the car going North I’ll get a whole drawing-room.  I’ve always wanted a drawing-room, and you’ll be my excuse.  We’ll sit and watch the fields and woods and cities slip past us, and know, when we get off, we can walk on the streets as freely as anybody.  We’ll be a genuine man and wife.”

His recital somehow stirred him.  He took her in his arms, pressed her cheek to his, and after a moment kissed her lips with the trembling ardor of a bridegroom.

Cissie remained passive a moment, then put up he hands, turned his face away, and slowly released herself.

Peter was taken aback.

“What is the matter, Cissie?”

“I can’t go, Peter.”

Peter looked at her with a feeling of strangeness.

“Can’t go?”

The girl shook her head.

“You mean—­you want us to live here?”

Cissie sat exceedingly still and barely shook her head.

The mulatto had a sensation as if the portals which disclosed a new and delicious life were slowly closing against him.  He stared into her oval face.

“You don’t mean, Cissie—­you don’t mean you don’t want to marry me?”

The fagots on the hearth burned now with a cheerful flame.  Cissie stared at it, breathing rapidly from the top of her lungs.  She seemed about to faint.  As Peter watched her the jealousy of the male crept over him.

“Look here, Cissie,” he said in a queer voice, “you—­you don’t mean, after all, that Tump Pack is—­”

“Oh no!  No!” Her face showed her repulsion.  Then she drew a long breath and apparently made up her mind to some sort of ordeal.

“Peter,” she asked in a low tone, “did you ever think what we colored people are trying to reach?” She stared into his uncomprehending eyes.  “I mean what is our aim, our goal, whom are we trying to be like?”

“We aren’t trying to be like any one.”  Peter was entirely at a loss.

“Oh, yes, we are,” Cissie hurried on.  “Why do colored girls straighten their hair, bleach their skins, pinch their feet?  Aren’t they trying to look like white girls?”

Peter agreed, wondering at her excitement.

“And you went North to college, Peter, so you could think and act like a white man—­”

Peter resisted this at once; he was copying nobody.  The whole object of college was to develop one’s personality, to bring out—­

The girl stopped his objections almost piteously.

“Oh, don’t argue!  You know arguing throws me off.  I—­now I’ve forgotten how I meant to say it!” Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.

Her mood was alarming, almost hysterical.  Peter began comforting her.

“There, there, dear, dear Cissie, what is the matter?  Don’t say it at all.”  Then, inconsistently, he added:  “You said I copied white men.  Well, what of it?”