Douglas came out to see me one night to tell me what was on his mind.  He wanted to be the prosecuting attorney.  Consider the straits of a young man who must make his way and get a place in the world!  Is there anything more desperate at times?  What was the law business in this community, divided, as it was, by eleven lawyers, shared in by visiting lawyers?  Douglas had to live.  Youth is forced to push ahead or be crushed.  I know he has been accused of manipulation in having the law passed by which he could be appointed to the office and supplant a rival.  Well, if he had not had the gifts and the energies to do such things, how could he have served the country and maintained himself?  The next February before he was twenty-two, he was state’s attorney for the district.  No wonder that lesser men railed at him.  But what one of them would not have done the same thing if he could?

And now I was seeing much of Dorothy.  What did it mean?  Was she only my friend?  Reverdy, her brother, was my most intimate friend.  Did she receive my attentions on account of the relations between him and me?  If she knew anything about Zoe she never betrayed it to me.  Surely she could not be in Jacksonville so long and be ignorant that Zoe was my half-sister.  At last I decided to explore Dorothy’s mind.  I went at it forthrightly.  Did she know that Zoe and I had the same father?

She had heard it.  That was a common enough thing in the South; not common there, however, for a colored mother to be the wife of a white father.  “I have suffered on account of this,” said Dorothy.  “You knew nothing about it and had nothing to do with it.  It is too bad—­too bad, Jimmy!”

There remained Zoe’s misadventure.  How could I approach that?  But if Dorothy had heard of it would she continue to receive me?  If she knew about it would not the present association of ideas bring it to mind and bespeak it to me by change of color or expression?  I looked at Dorothy quizzically.  I discovered nothing in her face.  Then I began to think of the certain probability that some one had come to her breathing rumors upon her.  So I said:  “Promise me something, Dorothy.  If any one ever tells you anything about me, say, for example, that I haven’t been perfectly fair with Zoe in every way, and honorable as far as I know how to be, will you withhold belief until you give me a chance?  Do you promise me that?” And Dorothy stretched her hand to me in a warm-hearted way.  “You are Reverdy’s friend, aren’t you, and he is yours.  Well, I promise you.  But it isn’t necessary, for it would have to be something that I could believe you capable of.  Then Reverdy would have to believe it, and then I might have a mind of my own after all.  Why, how could anyone say anything about you?  You have been as good to Zoe as if she were as white as I.”

And so Dorothy didn’t know.  I left the matter where it was.  I could not go on.  You see I was nineteen and Dorothy was eighteen and the year was 1834.