All this perplexed Mimi. She was too young and inexperienced to know that these people were in large part the victims of a system which made colour and hair texture and race a fetish. Nor did she know how all too frequently opportunity came in a direct ratio to the absence of pigmentation. It was baffling, annoying. And so too were Jean’s criticisms of his new environment. Mimi missed the romance of her old home, it is true, but the new scene with all its rawness and lack of beauty intrigued and fascinated her through its vigour and progressiveness. She began to feel a sympathy, at first faint but growing in strength, tinged with pity, for Jean in his unwillingness to adapt himself to newer ways and customs.
Not that she consciously put these into words nor even into tangible thought. She loved Jean too dearly, too wholeheartedly for that, and any criticism of him, real or implied, would have made her miserable for its imputation of disloyalty. No. It was simply that Jean was the follower of an older day, of an age that was passing even in Louisiana, that definitely had passed here in Georgia and to an even greater degree farther North. …
And Jean’s efforts to find his place in the new order and to make that place as comfortable, as little irritating as possible, met with but indifferent success. He found that he could not with any degree of pleasure nor of comfort join in the social activities of his business associates. They were too vigorous, too forthright for his simple taste. He had no puritanical streaks in his nature but the lusty laughter with which the men greeted the stories which were current, usually of a ribald and smutty nature, at first surprised him, then slightly nauseated him. It was the one thing he disliked in Mr. Hunter, whom he liked better than most of the others.
He could always tell when Mr. Hunter had heard a new one—for these stories the older man had a particular smile that at times bordered