“Oh you stupid, stupid boy, Jeff Campbell.  Love you, what do you think makes me always to forgive you.  If I certainly didn’t always love you Jeff, I certainly never would let you be always being all the time such a bother to me the way you certainly Jeff always are to me.  Now don’t you dass ever any more say words like that ever to me.  You hear me now Jeff, or I do something real bad sometime, so I really hurt you.  Now Jeff you just be good to me.  You know Jeff how bad I need it, now you should always be good to me!”

Jeff Campbell could not make an answer to Melanctha.  What was it he should now say to her?  What words could help him to make their feeling any better?  Jeff Campbell knew that he had learned to love deeply, that, he always knew very well now in him, Melanctha had learned to be strong to be always trusting, that he knew too now inside him, but Melanctha did not really love him, that he felt always too strong for him.  That fact always was there in him, and it always thrust itself firm, between them.  And so this talk did not make things really better for them.

Jeff Campbell was never any more a torment to Melanctha, he was only silent to her.  Jeff often saw Melanctha and he was very friendly with her and he never any more was a bother to her.  Jeff never any more now had much chance to be loving with her.  Melanctha never was alone now when he saw her.

Melanctha Herbert had just been getting thick in her trouble with Jeff Campbell, when she went to that church where she first met Rose, who later was married regularly to Sam Johnson.  Rose was a good-looking, better kind of black girl, and had been brought up quite like their own child by white folks.  Rose was living now with colored people.  Rose was staying just then with a colored woman, who had known ‘Mis’ Herbert and her black husband and this girl Melanctha.

Rose soon got to like Melanctha Herbert and Melanctha now always wanted to be with Rose, whenever she could do it.  Melanctha Herbert always was doing everything for Rose that she could think of that Rose ever wanted.  Rose always liked to be with nice people who would do things for her.  Rose had strong common sense and she was lazy.  Rose liked Melanctha Herbert, she had such kind of fine ways in her.  Then, too, Rose had it in her to be sorry for the subtle, sweet-natured, docile, intelligent Melanctha Herbert who always was so blue sometimes, and always had had so much trouble.  Then, too, Rose could scold Melanctha, for Melanctha Herbert never could know how to keep herself from trouble, and Rose was always strong to keep straight, with her simple selfish wisdom.

But why did the subtle, intelligent, attractive, half white girl Melanctha Herbert, with her sweetness and her power and her wisdom, demean herself to do for and to flatter and to be scolded, by this lazy, stupid, ordinary, selfish black girl.  This was a queer thing in Melanctha Herbert.