I now lost interest in our trip.  I thought:  “Here I am a man, no longer a boy, and what am I doing but wasting my time and abusing my talent?  What use am I making of my gifts?  What future have I before me following my present course?” These thoughts made me feel remorseful and put me in a fever to get to work, to begin to do something.  Of course I know now that I was not wasting time; that there was nothing I could have done at that age which would have benefited me more than going to Europe as I did.  The desire to begin work grew stronger each day.  I could think of nothing else.  I made up my mind to go back into the very heart of the South, to live among the people, and drink in my inspiration firsthand.  I gloated over the immense amount of material I had to work with, not only modern ragtime, but also the old slave songs—­material which no one had yet touched.

The more decided and anxious I became to return to the United States, the more I dreaded the ordeal of breaking with my millionaire.  Between this peculiar man and me there had grown a very strong bond of affection, backed up by a debt which each owed to the other.  He had taken me from a terrible life in New York and, by giving me the opportunity of traveling and of coming in contact with the people with whom he associated, had made me a polished man of the world.  On the other hand, I was his chief means of disposing of the thing which seemed to sum up all in life that he dreaded—­time.  As I remember him now, I can see that time was what he was always endeavoring to escape, to bridge over, to blot out; and it is not strange that some years later he did escape it forever, by leaping into eternity.

For some weeks I waited for just the right moment in which to tell my patron of my decision.  Those weeks were a trying time to me.  I felt that I was playing the part of a traitor to my best friend.  At length, one day he said to me:  “Well, get ready for a long trip; we are going to Egypt, and then to Japan.”  The temptation was for an instant almost overwhelming, but I summoned determination enough to say:  “I don’t think I want to go.”  “What!” he exclaimed, “you want to go back to your dear Paris?  You still think that the only spot on earth?  Wait until you see Cairo and Tokyo, you may change your mind.”  “No,” I stammered, “it is not because I want to go back to Paris.  I want to go back to the United States.”  He wished to know my reason, and I told him, as best I could, my dreams, my ambition, and my decision.  While I was talking, he watched me with a curious, almost cynical, smile growing on his lips.  When I had finished he put his hand on my shoulder—­this was the first physical expression of tender regard he had ever shown me—­and looking at me in a big-brotherly way, said:  “My boy, you are by blood, by appearance, by education, and by tastes a white man.  Now, why do you want to throw your life away amidst the poverty and ignorance, in the hopeless struggle, of the black people of the