to leave the building for the day, she saw him waiting outside just in time to dart back into the building and go out by the back door. He wrote her but his letters were unanswered. Once she saw him crossing perilously Fifth Avenue, dodging taxicabs and buses by a hair’s breadth while their drivers cursed and shouted at him fluently but a nearby shop gave her friendly refuge.
She prayed he would become disheartened, angry with her. And even as she prayed, a malevolent spirit within her was battling with her prayer and making her hope fervently he would not forget. She knew that if she saw him she would not be able to check the seeds of love which she found had taken root miraculously and sprouted alarmingly. She did not call it “love”—“silly infatuation which will pass away” was her name for it. She debated the wisdom of her course, wondered what would happen if she surrendered to the impulse to yield to this feeling towards him which came to her after she had switched off the night-lamp beside her bed and lay there between the cool sheets and listened to the street noises that came faintly up to her. She shielded the keen sensitiveness to each tiny impact of experience and of thought from heavy blows by trying to keep the heart of reality away from her. For reality frightened her while it fascinated her, made her long to creep away from it and find refuge in some realm of forgetfulness where she would be safe. Warring relentlessly and ruthlessly against that timidity was her common sense, which had been so largely increased by the experiences she had encountered.
Suppose I should marry him? I’d live in constant terror all my life, fearing that he would find out about Jean, about my race. The latter did not seem so important, but could she give up Jean forever? She knew she couldn’t. Fanciful plans sprang to her mind and as quickly were rejected. She thought of telling him Jean was a nephew, the child of some mythical and deceased sister or brother. No, she couldn’t do that—she couldn’t live a lie like that. She thought of leaving him with the family in County. They had learned to love him as their own child and had looked alarmed