because it seemed to her banal but more because of the mild affection it implied, vastly inferior in intensity to her own emotion. Reason, however, plays but small part when one’s love is concerned, thought Hilda, and she returned to her brooding. …
“It seems to me you’re making a mistake,” Mimi meanwhile was saying to Carl. “You keep harping on the way the women here gossip—that’s no practice peculiar only to Atlanta and the folks you and I know. Women do that everywhere, it seems to me, and I often think men do more gossiping than women. Does it ever occur to you there are a lot of things on the other side of the shield?”
“That’s the only reason I came back here,” Carl eagerly replied, the look of morbid unrest changing quickly to one of alert cheerfulness. “When I get most pessimistic about our own folks all I need to cheer me up is to look at unhappiness of white people. You ever notice that no matter how hard the luck he may be in, the Negro can laugh and sing and forget all his worries? They call