Tom had grown impatient, waiting in their sheltered seat on the lawn for Helen to return. She had gone on a mysterious mission to see Minerva, laughingly refused to tell him its purpose, but promised to return in a few minutes. When half an hour had passed without a sign he reconnoitered to find Minerva, and to his surprise she, too, had disappeared.

He returned to his trysting place and listened while the serenaders sang their first song. Unable to endure the delay longer he started to the house just as his father hastily left by the front door, and quickly passing the men at the gate, hurried down town.

The coast was clear and he moved cautiously to fathom, if possible, the mystery of Helen\'s disappearance. Finding no trace of her in Minerva\'s room, he entered the house and, seeing nothing of her in the halls, thrust his head in the library and found it empty. He walked in, peeping around with a boyish smile expecting her to leap out and surprise him. He opened the French window and looked for her on the porch. He hurried back into the room with a look of surprised disappointment and started to the door opening on the hall of the stairway. He heard distinctly the rustle of[Pg 389] a dress and the echo on the stairs of the footstep he knew so well.

He gave a boyish laugh, tiptoed quickly to the old-fashioned settee, dropped behind its high back and waited her coming.

Helen had hastily packed a travelling bag and thrown a coat over her arm. She slowly entered the library to replace the portrait she had taken, kissed it and started with feet of lead and set, staring eyes to slip through the lawn and avoid Tom as she had promised.

As she approached the corner of the settee the boy leaped up with a laugh:

"Where have you been?"

With a quick movement of surprise she threw the bag and coat behind her back. Luckily he had leaped so close he could not see.

"Where\'ve you been?" he repeated.

"Why, I\'ve just come from my room," she replied with an attempt at composure.

"What have you got your hat for?"

She flushed the slightest bit:

"Why, I was going for a walk."

"With a veil—at night—what have you got that veil for?"

The boyish banter in his tones began to yield to a touch of wonder.

Helen hesitated:

"Why, the crowds of singing and shouting men on the streets. I didn\'t wish to be recognized, and I wanted to hear what the speakers said."

"You were going to leave me and go alone to the speaker\'s stand?"

"Yes. Your father is going to see you and I was[Pg 390] nervous and frightened and wanted to pass the time until you were free again"—she paused, looked at him intently and spoke in a queer monotone—"the negroes who can\'t read and write have been disfranchised, haven\'t they?"

"Yes," he answered mechanically, "the ballot should never have been given them."

"Yet there\'s something pitiful about it after all, isn\'t there, Tom?" She asked the question with a strained wistfulness that startled the boy.

He answered automatically, but his keen, young eyes were studying with growing anxiety every movement of her face and form and every tone of her voice:

"I don\'t see it," he said carelessly.

She laid her left hand on his arm, the right hand still holding her bag and coat out of sight.

"Suppose," she whispered, "that you should wake up to-morrow morning and suddenly discover that a strain of negro blood poisoned your veins—what would you do?"

Tom frowned and watched her with a puzzled look:

"Never thought of such a thing!"

She pressed his arm eagerly:

"Think—what would you do?"

"What would I do?" he repeated in blank amazement.

"Yes."

His eyes were holding hers now with a steady stare of alarm. The questions she asked didn\'t interest him. Her glittering eyes and trembling hand did. Studying her intently he said lightly:

"To be perfectly honest, I\'d blow my brains out."[Pg 391]

With a cry she staggered back and threw her hand instinctively up as if to ward a blow:

"Yes—yes, you would—wouldn\'t you?"

He was staring at her now with blanched face and she was vainly trying to hide her bag and coat.

He seized her arms:

"Why are you so excited? Why do you tremble so?"—he drew the arm around that she was holding back—"What is it? What\'s the matter?"

His eye rested on the bag, he turned deadly pale and she dropped it with a sigh.

"What—what—does this mean?" he gasped. "You are trying to leave me without a word?"

She staggered and fell limp into a seat:

"Oh, Tom, the end has come, and I must go!"

"Go!" he cried indignantly, "then I go, too!"

"But you can\'t, dear!"

"And why not?"

"Your father has just told me the whole hideous secret of my birth—and it\'s hopeless!"

"What sort of man do you think I am? What sort of love do you think I\'ve given you? Separate us after the solemn vows we\'ve given to each other! Neither man nor the devil can come between us now!"

She looked at him wistfully:

"It\'s sweet to hear such words—though I know you can\'t make them good."

"I\'ll make them good," he broke in, "with every drop of blood in my veins—and no coward has ever borne my father\'s name—it\'s good blood!"

"That\'s just it—and blood will tell. It\'s the law of life and I\'ve given up."

"Well, I haven\'t given up," he protested, "remember[Pg 392] that! Try me with your secret—I laugh before I hear it!"

With a gleam of hope in her deep blue eyes she rose trembling:

"You really mean that? If I go an outcast you would go with me?"

"Yes—yes."

"And if a curse is branded on my forehead you\'ll take its shame as yours?"

"Yes."

She laid her hand on his arm, looked long and yearningly into his eyes, and said:

"Your father has just told me that I am a negress—my mother is an octoroon!"

The boy flinched involuntarily, stared in silence an instant, and his form suddenly stiffened:

"I don\'t believe a word of it! My father has been deceived. It\'s preposterous!"

Helen drew closer as if for shelter and clung to his hand wistfully:

"It does seem a horrible joke, doesn\'t it? I can\'t realize it. But it\'s true. The major gave me his solemn word in tears of sympathy. He knew both my father and mother. I am a negress!"

The boy\'s arm unconsciously shrank the slightest bit from her touch while he stared at her with wildly dilated eyes and spoke in a hoarse whisper:

"It\'s impossible! It\'s impossible—I tell you!"

He attempted to lift his hand to place it on his throbbing forehead. Helen clung to him in frantic grief and terror:

"Please, please—don\'t shrink from me! Have pity on me! If you feel that way, for God\'s sake don\'t let[Pg 393] me see it—don\'t let me know it—I—I—can\'t endure it! I can\'t——"

The tense figure collapsed in his arms and the brown head sank on his breast with a sob of despair. The boy pressed her to his heart and held her close. He felt her body shiver as he pushed the tangled ringlets back from her high, fair forehead and felt the cold beads of perspiration. The serenaders at the gate were singing again—a negro folk-song. The absurd childish words which he knew so well rang through the house, a chanting mockery.

"There, there," he whispered tenderly, "I didn\'t shrink from you, dear. I couldn\'t shrink from you—you only imagined it. I was just stunned for a moment. The blow blinded me. But it\'s all right now, I see things clearly. I love you—that\'s all—and love is from God, or it\'s not love, it\'s a sham——"

A low sob and she clung to him with desperate tenderness.

He bent his head close until the blonde hair mingled with the ric............