Melanctha, with your never remembering anything only what you just then are feeling in you, and you not understanding what any one else is ever feeling, if they don’t holler just the way you are doing.  No Melanctha, I certainly don’t see any ways you are likely ever to meet one, so good as you are always thinking you be.”  “No, Jeff Campbell, it certainly ain’t that way with me at all the way you say it.  It’s because I am always knowing what it is I am wanting, when I get it.  I certainly don’t never have to wait till I have it, and then throw away what I got in me, and then come back and say, that’s a mistake I just been making, it ain’t that never at all like I understood it, I want to have, bad, what I didn’t think it was I wanted.  It’s that way of knowing right what I am wanting, makes me feel nobody can come right with me, when I am feeling things, Jeff Campbell.  I certainly do say Jeff Campbell, I certainly don’t think much of the way you always do it, always never knowing what it is you are ever really wanting and everybody always got to suffer.  No Jeff, I don’t certainly think there is much doubting which is better and the stronger with us two, Jeff Campbell.”

“As you will, Melanctha Herbert,” cried Jeff Campbell, and he rose up, and he thundered out a black oath, and he was fierce to leave her now forever, and then with the same movement, he took her in his arms and held her.

“What a silly goose boy you are, Jeff Campbell,” Melanctha whispered to him fondly.

“Oh yes,” said Jeff, very dreary.  “I never could keep really mad with anybody, not when I was a little boy and playing.  I used most to cry sometimes, I couldn’t get real mad and keep on a long time with it, the way everybody always did it.  It’s certainly no use to me Melanctha, I certainly can’t ever keep mad with you Melanctha, my dear one.  But don’t you ever be thinking it’s because I think you right in what you been just saying to me.  I don’t Melanctha really think it that way, honest, though I certainly can’t get mad the way I ought to.  No Melanctha, little girl, really truly, you ain’t right the way you think it.  I certainly do know that Melanctha, honest.  You certainly don’t do me right Melanctha, the way you say you are thinking.  Good-bye Melanctha, though you certainly is my own little girl for always.”  And then they were very good a little to each other, and then Jeff went away for that evening, from her.

Melanctha had begun now once more to wander.  Melanctha did not yet always wander, but a little now she needed to begin to look for others.  Now Melanctha Herbert began again to be with some of the better kind of black girls, and with them she sometimes wandered.  Melanctha had not yet come again to need to be alone, when she wandered.

Jeff Campbell did not know that Melanctha had begun again to wander.  All Jeff knew, was that now he could not be so often with her.