One Saturday afternoon, in early June, I was coming up Fifth Avenue, and at the corner of Twenty-third Street I met her.  She had been shopping.  We stopped to chat for a moment, and I suggested that we spend half an hour at the Eden Musee.  We were standing leaning on the rail in front of a group of figures, more interested in what we had to say to each other than in the group, when my attention became fixed upon a man who stood at my side studying his catalogue.  It took me only an instant to recognize in him my old friend “Shiny.”  My first impulse was to change my position at once.  As quick as a flash I considered all the risks I might run in speaking to him, and most especially the delicate question of introducing him to her.  I confess that in my embarrassment and confusion I felt small and mean.  But before I could decide what to do, he looked around at me and, after an instant, quietly asked:  “Pardon me; but isn’t this——?” The nobler part in me responded to the sound of his voice and I took his hand in a hearty clasp.  Whatever fears I had felt were quickly banished, for he seemed, at a glance, to divine my situation, and let drop no word that would have aroused suspicion as to the truth.  With a slight misgiving I presented him to her and was again relieved of fear.  She received the introduction in her usual gracious manner, and without the least hesitancy or embarrassment joined in the conversation.  An amusing part about the introduction was that I was upon the point of introducing him as “Shiny,” and stammered a second or two before I could recall his name.  We chatted for some fifteen minutes.  He was spending his vacation north, with the intention of doing four or six weeks’ work in one of the summer schools; he was also going to take a bride back with him in the fall.  He asked me about myself, but in so diplomatic a way that I found no difficulty in answering him.  The polish of his language and he unpedantic manner in which he revealed his culture greatly impressed her; and after we had left the Musee she showed it by questioning me about him.  I was surprised at the amount of interest a refined black man could arouse.  Even after changes in the conversation she reverted several times to the subject of “Shiny.”  Whether it was more than mere curiosity I could not tell, but I was convinced that she herself knew very little about prejudice.

Just why it should have done so I do not know, but somehow the “Shiny” incident gave me encouragement and confidence to cast the die of my fate.  I reasoned, however, that since I wanted to marry her only, and since it concerned her alone, I would divulge my secret to no one else, not even her parents.