Up to this time I had assumed and played my role as a white man with a certain degree of nonchalance, a carelessness as to the outcome, which made the whole thing more amusing to me than serious; but now I ceased to regard “being a white man” as a sort of practical joke.  My acting had called for mere external effects.  Now I began to doubt my ability to play the part.  I watched her to see if she was scrutinizing me, to see if she was looking for anything in me which made me differ from the other men she knew.  In place of an old inward feeling of superiority over many of my friends I began to doubt myself.  I began even to wonder if I really was like the men I associated with; if there was not, after all, an indefinable something which marked a difference.

But, in spite of my doubts and timidity, my affair progressed, and I finally felt sufficiently encouraged to decide to ask her to marry me.  Then began the hardest struggle of my life, whether to ask her to marry me under false colors or to tell her the whole truth.  My sense of what was exigent made me feel there was no necessity of saying anything; but my inborn sense of honor rebelled at even indirect deception in this case.  But however much I moralized on the question, I found it more and more difficult to reach the point of confession.  The dread that I might lose her took possession of me each time I sought to speak, and rendered it impossible for me to do so.  That moral courage requires more than physical courage is no mere poetic fancy.  I am sure I should have found it easier to take the place of a gladiator, no matter how fierce the Numidian lion, than to tell that slender girl that I had Negro blood in my veins.  The fact which I had at times wished to cry out, I now wished to hide forever.

During this time we were drawn together a great deal by the mutual bond of music.  She loved to hear me play Chopin and was herself far from being a poor performer of his compositions.  I think I carried her every new song that was published which I thought suitable to her voice, and played the accompaniment for her.  Over these songs we were like two innocent children with new toys.  She had never been anything but innocent; but my innocence was a transformation wrought by my love for her, love which melted away my cynicism and whitened my sullied soul and gave me back the wholesome dreams of my boyhood.

My artistic temperament also underwent an awakening.  I spent many hours at my piano, playing over old and new composers.  I also wrote several little pieces in a more or less Chopinesque style, which I dedicated to her.  And so the weeks and months went by.  Often words of love trembled on my lips, but I dared not utter them, because I knew they would have to be followed by other words which I had not the courage to frame.  There might have been some other woman in my set whom I could have fallen in love with and asked to marry me without a word of explanation; but the more I knew this girl, the less could I find it in my heart to deceive her.  And yet, in spite of this specter that was constantly looming up before me, I could never have believed that life held such happiness as was contained in those dream days of love.