“I think I interrupted you.”

I pushed the risk one step nearer the verge, because of the words I wished finally to reach.  “In 1812, when England burned our White House down, we did not sit in the ashes; we set about rebuilding.”

And now she burst out.  “That’s not fair, that’s perfectly inexcusable!  Did England then set loose on us a pack of black savages and politicians to help us rebuild?  Why, this very day I cannot walk on the other side of the river, I dare not venture off the New Bridge; and you who first beat us and then unleashed the blacks to riot in a new ‘equality’ that they were no more fit for than so many apes, you sat back at ease in your victory and your progress, having handed the vote to the negro as you might have handed a kerosene lamp to a child of three, and let us crushed, breathless people cope with the chaos and destruction that never came near you.  Why, how can you dare—­” Once again, admirably she pulled herself up as she had done when she spoke of the President.  “I mustn’t!” she declared, half whispering, and then more clearly and calmly, “I mustn’t.”  And she shook her head as if shaking something off.  “Nor must you,” she finished, charmingly and quietly, with a smile.

“I will not,” I assured her.  She was truly noble.

“But I did think that you understood us,” she said pensively.

“Miss La Heu, when you talked to me about the President and the White House, I said that you were hard to answer.  Do you remember?”

“Perfectly.  I said I was glad you found me so.’

“You helped me to understand you then, and now I want to be helped to further understanding.  Last night I heard the ’Ode for the Daughters of Dixie.’  I had a bad time listening to that.”

“Do you presume to criticise it?  Do we criticise your Grand Army reunions, and your ‘Marching through Georgia,’ and your ’John Brown’s Body,’ and your Arlington Museum?  Can we not be allowed to celebrate our heroes and our glories and sing our songs?”

She had helped me already!  Still, still, the something I was groping for, the something which had given me such pain during the ode, remained undissolved, remained unanalyzed between us; I still had to have it out with her, and the point was that it had to be with her, and not simply with myself alone.  We must thrash out together the way to an understanding; an agreement was not in the least necessary—­we could agree to differ, for that matter, with perfect cordiality—­but an understanding we must reach.  And as I was thinking this my light increased, and I saw clearly the ultimate thing which lay at the bottom of my own feeling, and which had been strangely confusing me all along.  This discovery was the key to the whole remainder of my talk; I never let go of it.  The first thing it opened for me was that Eliza La Heu didn’t understand me, which was quite natural, since I had only just this moment become clear to myself.