her. She knows now, though, there’s nothing between us. So for her sake and since this talk’s been started, we’d better see less of each other.” She added, almost as an afterthought: “I do hate, though, the satisfaction we’ll give these old tabbies.”
“But, Mimi,” Carl protested, his face eloquent of the pain within, “Hilda’s an awfully nice kid and I’m fond of her just as I’m fond of my own sister, Mildred. And I’d like to know who saw us at that dance so I could take one good punch at them!” he added with bitterness.
“It wouldn’t do any good—they’d be sure then we’d done something terrible,” she counselled.
“Just now, Mimi, you said there’s nothing between us. I haven’t thought of you that way, Mimi, but—but—” he stammered, trying to take her hand.
“Don’t be silly, Carl,” Mimi laughed, moving away from him. She felt a sense of guilt, of disloyalty to Hilda that she had phrased it so crudely. As Carl repeated her words she was ashamed of them—they sounded almost as though she had uttered them in the hope of a denial from Carl. “We’ve had a good time together and I’ve learned a lot and I’m grateful. You’ve given me a faith in my own people that I have never had before. Before I came to Atlanta I never thought much about ‘white people’ or ‘coloured people.’ I just thought of people as people. And then came that terrible night of the riot. After that I hated all white people and began to think every Negro was perfect even though my common sense told me I was foolish. Now I begin to see the good and the bad, in white people and coloured people—and that’s something.”
But Carl heard none of the things she was saying. He sat with his face in his hands, his shoulders drooping dejectedly. He raised his head as she finished speaking. Mimi was touched with the look of pain upon it.