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It was not long before Mimi knew in greater detail the reasons for Mrs. Hunter’s apprehension. Like a great orchestra beginning pianissimo upon a symphony, the tongues started clacking in soft and cryptic whisperings. Carl, with reckless disregard of the conventions, made no attempt to conceal his derelictions, his wandering from the ultra-strict codes which governed his family and the set in which it moved. He gave the prying eyes and clattering tongues an abundance of fuel, his flaunting of local standards serving much as the upward sweep of a conductor’s baton would draw forth a great swelling tone from his players. Carl was seen no more at church despite several acrimonious discussions on the subject with his father. Twice he was seen at a moving-picture show with a girl who was déclassée⁠—years before, her name had been linked in somewhat opprobrious fashion with that of a married man of the town. It was true no proof had been produced of any wrongdoing on their part and, as was the usual custom in such affairs, the man’s connection with the embryonic scandal had been long since forgotten. With the passage of years the blot on her name had grown through the very indefiniteness of the original rumour. For years she had been considered by the good Christians of the town almost as though her offence had been that of being “a fancy woman.”

Carl had known the girl for many years, as long, in fact, as he could remember. When Mimi had refused to see him, he had by chance met and talked with the girl one day and she had interested him. Even when he said to her one day: “Why haven’t we been friendly all these years?” she had made no defence of her reputation nor had she complained of the years of ostracism she had undergone. Had she done either of these, Carl’s interest in her would probably have died instantly. Knowing in a hazy sort of way of her story, he was attracted by her calm acceptance of it, and he found himself more and more drawn to her. Neither of them thought of their friendship save as friendship. But it would have been a feat of no mean proportions to convince those who saw them together that there was nothing questionable about their relationship. Her halting suggestion to Carl that he might bring unpleasant comment upon himself if he were seen too frequently with her had angered him⁠—he resolved to go with her wherever and whenever he chose.

This affair, together with the known fact that Carl was drinking rather heavily, was all that was needed to consign him to the outermost circles. His family’s standing saved him from complete condemnation, though at the same time it brought more criticism upon him. He knew that had he come from a less respected family little would have been said regarding his derelictions. But the fact of his dissipation, which he took little pains to conceal, only furnished the groundwork for the reputation that grew with startling speed. Bandied about over teacups and back fences, across pews and shop-counters, through telephone and letter, a character of infinitely intricate pattern was woven around him.

All this meant little to Carl, however. He knew now that his feeling towards Mimi was not the disinterested, impersonal affair he had thought it. Women were queer, he concluded. At times they can be as ruthless and as without scruples as pirates or highwaymen and then turn right around and permit farfetched and ultra-chivalrous and foolish little consciences to destroy happiness for themselves and for others. He knew Mimi did not love him but he could not understand why she had insisted, all because she felt she owed some vague sort of duty to Hilda, that they sacrifice all the happiness there had been for them in their companionship.

And while Carl was rambling through the misty and unhappy realm of his thoughts, Mimi was treading much the same path. She heard the stories of his dissipation⁠—her friends saw to it that she should hear them with all current elaborations. These, instead of having the intended effect of driving the wedge between her and Carl deeper, appealed to her vanity⁠—she rather enjoyed the romantic glow which filled her on realizing that a man was throwing his life away for love of her. She found, too, that Carl occupied an increasing part in her thoughts. At night she lay awake for hours, seeing his face, hearing his voice. The separation which she herself imposed began to act as a boomerang upon her emotions⁠—instead of holding herself in check, as she had never experienced any difficulty in doing when she was seeing Carl regularly, she now found that she could no longer keep him from her thoughts. With rapidly growing intensity these moods came upon her until the mention of Carl’s name caused a queerly delightful sensation within her.⁠ ⁠…

Mrs. Adams took her turn entertaining the Fleur-de-Lis in October. Jean objected strenuously to going but Mrs. Daquin insisted.

“It’s only once a year husbands are allowed to attend and it’s little enough to ask you to go just this once. Besides, Mrs. Adams will feel badly if you don’t go,” she had pleaded, successfully.

After they had gone Mimi sat on the porch enjoying the crisp, chilly air. Tiring, she was entering the house when she saw a familiar figure enter and pass through the circle of light cast by the corner streetlamp. She waited until the shadowy form was passing the gate. It turned and looked up at the darkened house as it passed and she was happy that it did so.

“Carl,” she called softly.

The figure stopped suddenly.

“Won’t you come in awhile?” she urged.

Carl stood indecisively at the gate, then opened it and entered. As he greeted her a mantle of constraint like a pall fell upon them both.

“Come inside⁠—it’s rather chilly out here,” she remarked.

He followed her into the parlour and sat silent while she adjusted the shades and switched on the light.

“Well, you’re back again even if I did have to shanghai you,” she laughed. The forced pleasantry and the laugh both fell rather flat, she felt.

“Why did you make me come in?” he demanded, sullenly.

“Make you come in?” she laughed again.

“Don’t try to be coy, Mimi, or evade my question,” Carl almost angrily charged. “You told me to stay away from you⁠—”

She evaded the challenge.

“I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about you lately,” she sought to change the subject.

“What of it? And what’s the use of discussing it? These people here would talk about Jesus Christ himself.”

Mimi watched him closely. Here was a newer and more bitter mood than any in which she had hithertoo seen him. And he looked badly, too. His face was haggard. Under his eyes were dark circles, and the eyes themselves were sunken, reddened. Deep lines were in his face. He looked distrait, miserable. As she watched, his face became softer and he sank it in his hands. In muffled tones he began to speak again.

“Mimi, I’m a weak, vicious creature and no good to myself or anybody else. I used to fuss a lot about these people around here who talk about other people’s affairs⁠—I still talk about them and hate them. But, after all, they’re right⁠—I’m everything vile and low they’ve said I am⁠—”

“You mustn’t talk that way, Carl. You’re nothing of the sort.”

She tried to comfort him but he stopped her with a gesture of mingled impatience and denial. His abjectness stirred her deeply. She felt again the wave of tenderness coming over her that she had experienced the last time she had talked with him in this very room, the time she had sent him away. She was a little frightened⁠—her emotion was deeper, more moving than before. His unhappiness had subtly transferred itself to her and she found herself filled with an almost overwhelming desire to touch him, to hold him near her.

Carl raised his head and looked searchingly at her. His gaze disturbed her, moved her, made her uncomfortable. She remembered the day she first met him, the inclusive way in which he had surveyed her and the resentment his look had stirred in her. There was no resentment now. Instead there was a fear he might see way down beneath and know how she had missed him, how she had longed for him.

“Mimi, there’s one thing I want to tell you now that I’m here. I feel like a dog in telling you⁠—I have no business even thinking it. But I want you to know⁠—no matter what stories you hear⁠—that⁠—that⁠—I love you!” His tone was half defiant, half tender, as he nervously flung the last three words at her.

Mimi sat silent, her eyes in her lap. With Carl’s declaration a great peace came upon her. Doubt, fear, uncertainty left her.

“And I love you, too, Carl,” she said, simply.

With a bound he crossed the room and sat beside her.

“You⁠—love⁠—me⁠—too?” he asked, amazement, doubt that he had heard aright in his voice.

Mimi, her eyes filled with tears of happiness, could only nod.

“Oh, Mimi darling,” Carl half sobbed, and pillowed his face on her breast while she pressed him close to her, holding him with all the tenderness that had been pent up within her, holding him as though he would fly away never to return if she relaxed for an instant the tightness of her grasp.⁠ ⁠…

It seemed years later when Carl left.

“Mimi, I wonder if we have done right?” he asked as he stood at the door, his voice worried, uncertain.

Mimi only smiled as she kissed him.⁠ ⁠…

She had been asleep for a long time when Jean and his wife returned.

After she had undressed and turned out the light she lay in bed and thought of Carl. Life was funny, she mused. People came into one’s life, flickered like the figures in a movie thrown on an imperfect screen and passed out of one’s consciousness leaving no memories of importance behind them. Most people were like that but every so often there came those, always few in number, who stayed and, by staying, created all sorts of difficult and unpleasant or pleasant complications. She wondered why nearly everybody she knew or had read about made simple little problems into tremendous ones and harried themselves with things which, seen later, were of such slight worth. Conscience? Right? Honour? Justice? Truth? What were all these except little shibboleths which man had created in his own mind like little gods and before which he prostrated himself in abject groveling? Truth? She remembered the thing Carl had once quoted to her from Spinoza⁠—truth is made up of the lies grown hoary with age.

But after all there must be something in these things men had lived by and for which they had died. She wondered what it all could be. Were they worth all the agony and bloodshed and sacrifice they had brought?

Here I am, she mused, a woman, a Negro. Life for me if I were white would be hard enough, but it’s going to be doubly so when I have race problems added to my own difficulties as a woman. She toyed idly with the notion as to what her lot would have been if she had been born white⁠—if she were to cross over the line and forget the Negro blood in her body. The idea was not attractive. In New Orleans the women who attracted her most and whom she admired above all others were not white⁠—at least, they were not Anglo-Saxon. They all lived in the Creole quarter and Jean had pointed out many of them who had Negro blood, some of them knowing it and others in ignorance of it. She had not needed Jean’s telling her to pick them out⁠—there was something tangible yet intangible about them which indicated it to the observant eye⁠—a warmth, a delicate humanness, an attractiveness which did not belong to the women who lived north of Canal Street.

And here in Atlanta she had watched them, noting the subtle differences even in those like herself whose skins were fair. No wonder that in New Orleans in the old days, as she had read in the books of French travelers, the men often deserted the balls where their wives and daughters were, and slipped away to those more resplendent ones where quadroon women held sway. Mimi remembered a comparison one of them had made between these who had Negro blood with the American women⁠—“frank, warmhearted⁠ ⁠… with manners more interesting than the Americans⁠ ⁠… the roundness and beauty of shape in the women also contrasting with the straightness and angularity of American figures.”

She had asked Jean, in her innocence, to tell her about these balls but for some reason she could not explain he had evaded her question and seemed to be somewhat embarrassed by it. No, she concluded, with all its faults and petty unpleasant features, she would rather remain with her own people. They got, apparently, so much more out of the life they lived with all its barriers than those who had more but seemed infinitely less happy with it.

Her thoughts, she realized, revolved always in a circle of which the exact centre was Carl. She wondered why he and she had not ended their worries sooner by acceptance of the love which had come to them. It had all been so futile, so childish, and Mimi, with the reluctance of youth to think of itself as youthful, felt rather ashamed that they had acted in such callow and infantile manner. Now that she had stopped fighting against the love for Carl which she realized had been in her heart all the time, her fretful and worried air left her. She lay in her narrow bed and smiled tenderly as she felt again his lips from which his kisses at first had fallen upon hers like gentle, soft blows. She stirred happily as she felt once more the rough possessiveness to which his lips had changed⁠—she was not conscious of hurt until now when she realized her own lips were swollen slightly where he had pressed her close to him, while she had yielded happily. She was wondering where it would all end as she fell asleep.⁠ ⁠…

It seemed to her she had hardly closed her eyes when she was rudely awakened. Mrs. Daquin was shaking her roughly, a dressing-gown thrown hastily over her nightdress.

“Mimi, come quickly!” she was calling. “Something’s happened to your father.”

“What’s the matter? Have you called the doctor?” asked Mimi as she hurried down the hall after Mrs. Daquin. Mimi was now thoroughly awake, a strange fear in her heart.

“Yes, he’s on the way here,” the older woman whispered as they entered Jean’s bedroom.

Jean was lying on the bed stretched at full length. His breath came with difficulty and his face was covered with a cold, clammy perspiration. Mimi with a little cry of distress and fear, quickly checked, flung herself on her knees beside the bed. She tried to feel Jean’s pulse but could find no trace. She pressed her head against Jean’s breast, trying to hear or feel his heart beating. An icy terror came over her when she could feel no throbbing. Jean groaned heavily as though in great pain. Mimi was happy to hear it⁠—at least, that was a sign that Jean was not dead.

The doctor found her there beside the bed while Mrs. Daquin stood at the foot, weeping and wringing her hands, all her efficiency and forthrighteousness fled in the face of this phenomenon. He gently led them from the room.

For hours, it seemed, they waited there. Once the door opened hastily and they heard the doctor, who had rushed past them without speaking, telephone another physician, speaking ominously of strychnine and nitroglycerine.

As he reentered the sickroom he muttered in answer to Mimi’s question something about Jean’s heart. “He’s a sick man⁠—a very sick man,” floated back to the two women as he closed the door.⁠ ⁠…

Morning found them waiting. For the first time Mimi felt close to Mrs. Daquin. Unconsciously they had clung together, brought close by the spectre which hovered over them. Mrs. Daquin brought a wrap and put it around Mimi and Mimi smiled her thanks. It seemed quite a natural thing that Mrs. Daquin should let her arm remain around the girl’s shoulders when she had placed the wrap there. Mimi snuggled near her and in her embrace Mimi felt a security from the dreadful thing in the room where Jean lay.

The door opened and the two doctors, haggard from their work, anxiety and loss of sleep, emerged, closed the door softly behind them. Dr. Adams led them to the lower floor before speaking.

“Mr. Daquin has had a very serious attack. Heart trouble. Brought on by acute indigestion. We’ve given him a double injection of strychnine and nitroglycerine to speed up his heart action. At first I couldn’t get any heart action even with my stethoscope. Thought he was gone. He’s resting now. Keep him quiet. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

Mimi felt, as Dr. Adams uttered his crisp, staccato sentences, as though she were a condemned criminal standing before a judge, hearing a terrible sentence pronounced upon her. Jean⁠—her Jean⁠—gentle, uncomplaining, always kind⁠—dangerously ill. It didn’t seem possible.

“I’ll tell Mrs. Adams and Hilda to come over and do what they can to help you,” Dr. Adams promised as he left the house.⁠ ⁠…

The news of Jean’s illness spread rapidly. Before Mimi and Mrs. Daquin could finish dressing they began to come with offers of help. Mrs. Adams and Hilda were the first. Hilda and Mimi held each other close, all differences melted away by the sadness which had come to Mimi. For a long time now Hilda had known from Carl’s attitude that her hopes were of no avail. She had freely unburdened her woes at last to her mother and in the telling of them and the ready sympathy which she received from Mrs. Adams had found the peace of resignation. She knew through some psychic means that Carl loved Mimi and her newfound calm enabled her to feel thoroughly happy for their sakes.⁠ ⁠…

All day they came. Mimi never knew there could be so much solicitude, so much genuine kindness. One came and prepared a meal, another tidied the house, another volunteered to do errands. Mimi felt ashamed of her dislike for some of them in the past. Affliction had shown her the real worth which lay beneath the petty malice, the ignominious bickerings and jealousies which to her had seemed the outstanding characteristics of many of these folks.

Jean slept the greater part of the day. Late in the afternoon Dr. Adams gave him another stimulant. Mimi had begun to show the strain through which she had been and he urged her to go for a walk. Returning, she found Mrs. Daquin waiting for her in the hall.

“Your father’s been asking for you. Dr. Adams said it would be all right for you to go in and see him but he must not be excited.”

He smiled as she entered the darkened room.

“I’m sorry I’ve caused you so much trouble,” he apologized as Mimi kissed him tenderly. As she bent over him she noticed for the first time how white his hair had become. His moustache and goatee, too, without their daily brushing and waxing, looked less magnificent than they had always seemed. Jean’s eyes were sunken, his face lined with the suffering he had been through. An ineffable pity filled her, she wished eagerly even as she knew it was futile that she could take his place.

“Do you remember that day in the St. Louis cemetery just before we came here?” Jean was asking.

“Do I remember it? I’ll never forget it,” she assured him.

“It seems a long, long time ago.”

A reminiscent, faraway look came into Jean’s eyes and he lay there, his thin hands resting on his chest, for several minutes without speaking. Mimi waited. At last he stirred, smiling again at her, this time apologetically.

“We were happy there, weren’t we, Mimi? I’ve never been satisfied here. Too much rushing about, no time for living⁠—real living. And you and I⁠—we haven’t had the time here for the long walks we used to take when we were home. No⁠—no⁠—I’m not blaming you,” he assured her as she started to speak. “We’ve both been too busy⁠—”

But Mimi felt a sting in the words. She knew there was none intended, it was her own conscience that lashed her. She wished fervently she had not been so selfish, that she had thought more of Jean. She knew now he had never been happy in Atlanta. His leisurely, reflective nature made him unhappy, he was wholly out of place anywhere save in some easygoing place like his beloved Louisiana.

“I suppose it’s been for the best, though. Young people like you haven’t much patience for the old ways and customs⁠—you, too, would in time have become unhappy there. But I didn’t intend to ramble off like that. It’s about you I wanted to talk.⁠ ⁠… You’ve grown into a beautiful woman, Mimi,” he declared, proudly. “Every day you look more like Margot did when I first knew her. And you’ve ways like hers⁠—only you’ve more spirit, more fire.⁠ ⁠…”

Again he lay silent and Mimi, knowing instinctively he was living again his days with Margot, hardly dared breathe lest she break the spell. The room grew dark but neither of them noticed it. From outside came the soft cries of children at play far away, the bumping of a short, fat street car as it meandered down Auburn Avenue, the shrill voice of a woman calling her child to supper.

“I’m worried, Mimi⁠—not afraid⁠—just worried. I’ve had these heart attacks before but I said nothing about them because I didn’t want to worry you and Mary⁠—but this one last night was the worst one yet.”

She sought to comfort him, telling him little falsehoods about the allegedly minor importance which Dr. Adams had attached to the attack. It’ll pass over and he’ll be none the worse for it, were the words she put in the physician’s mouth.

“Did he say that really?” Jean asked anxiously, yet hopefully.

She assured him that those were the exact words. Jean leaned back on his pillow, a more peaceful look on his face which removed some of the shame she was feeling on account of the lie. She would have lied a thousand times cheerfully if they served to make him more content.

“He didn’t seem so optimistic when he was talking to me,” Jean mused. “I suppose he was trying to scare me so I would stay in bed.”

“Of course that was what he intended. Doctors assume patients will do just about half what they are told to do, so they are told to do twice what they need to do,” she encouraged him.

“I’m tired, Mimi⁠—so tired. I think I’ll take a little nap now,” he said after a pause. “I wanted to talk to you because I didn’t know how serious this attack might be tell you to remember, whatever happened, you’re a Daquin, but now I’ve heard what the doctor said, that can wait. You’re a beautiful girl, Mimi, almost too beautiful. But you’ll come through all right⁠—just make up your own mind what’s the right thing to do, pay no attention to what other people say, and then do what you think is right.”

Automatically she thought of Carl.

“Last night, after you and Mrs. Daquin left, Carl came by the house and I called him in,” she told Jean. “He was very unhappy⁠—I never saw him so downcast. We talked awhile⁠—then⁠—then⁠—oh, Jean, he told me he loved me⁠—and it made me mighty happy⁠—”

“Carl’s a good boy, Mimi. A little too flighty⁠—a little weak, too, I’m afraid⁠—but he’ll come around all right, I think. They don’t understand him and they’re always rubbing his fur the wrong way but⁠—Carl’s got the right stuff in him.”

Jean lapsed again into one of his retrospective moods. His eyes slowly closed and soon he fell asleep. Mimi kissed him gently, lowered the shade to keep the light from the street lamp from disturbing him, and stole softly from the room.⁠ ⁠…