Jane was a roughened woman.  She had power and she liked to use it, she had much white blood and that made her see clear, she liked drinking and that made her reckless.  Her white blood was strong in her and she had grit and endurance and a vital courage.  She was always game, however much she was in trouble.  She liked Melanctha Herbert for the things that she had like her, and then Melanctha was young, and she had sweetness, and a way of listening with intelligence and sympathetic interest, to the stories that Jane Harden often told out of her experience.

Jane grew always fonder of Melanctha.  Soon they began to wander, more to be together than to see men and learn their various ways of working.  Then they began not to wander, and Melanctha would spend long hours with Jane in her room, sitting at her feet and listening to her stories, and feeling her strength and the power of her affection, and slowly she began to see clear before her one certain way that would be sure to lead to wisdom.

Before the end came, the end of the two years in which Melanctha spent all her time when she was not at school or in her home, with Jane Harden, before these two years were finished, Melanctha had come to see very clear, and she had come to be very certain, what it is that gives the world its wisdom.

Jane Harden always had a little money and she had a room in the lower part of the town.  Jane had once taught in a colored school.  She had had to leave that too on account of her bad conduct.  It was her drinking that always made all the trouble for her, for that can never be really covered over.

Jane’s drinking was always growing worse upon her.  Melanctha had tried to do the drinking but it had no real attraction for her.

In the first year, between Jane Harden and Melanctha Herbert, Jane had been much the stronger.  Jane loved Melanctha and she found her always intelligent and brave and sweet and docile, and Jane meant to, and before the year was over she had taught Melanctha what it is that gives many people in the world their wisdom.

Jane had many ways in which to do this teaching.  She told Melanctha many things.  She loved Melanctha hard and made Melanctha feel it very deeply.  She would be with other people and with men and with Melanctha, and she would make Melanctha understand what everybody wanted, and what one did with power when one had it.

Melanctha sat at Jane’s feet for many hours in these days and felt Jane’s wisdom.  She learned to love Jane and to have this feeling very deeply.  She learned a little in these days to know joy, and she was taught too how very keenly she could suffer.  It was very different this suffering from that Melanctha sometimes had from her mother and from her very unendurable black father.  Then she was fighting and she could be strong and valiant in her suffering, but here with Jane Harden she was longing and she bent and pleaded with her suffering.