Again Hertha heard him flay the man to whom she had so unreservedly given her love, and again she shrank from his bitter words. But sitting there in the church, with the homely symbols of religious life about her, with the sun streaming through the crude stained-glass windows, she saw clearly the danger and the sin from which she had escaped. And she saw too that Tom, her young but manly brother, would hate with an animal-like intensity the man who should dare to do her an injury. She listened with deepened respect to what he went on to say.
"You can't make a Georgia cracker like Negroes, Hertha, not if you was to work on him all your life. If you find you get to love him, tell him everything and then let it drop. There ain't no good in going over things. Up here in the North nobody thinks much about folks' past, they're too busy. If he's good to you, and works hard and plays square, there ain't no need for you to worry because he can't see like you do. He ain't good enough for you, of course. No man is. But a husband ain't to be judged by his opinions on the race question."
He touched her arm gently in a caress. "It has to be good-by, Sister," he went on, "the white world don't meet the colored world to-day. Look at this church here. It's close to white folks' homes but no one ever thinks to come in to worship. I've sat here and thought of it many times. We ain't really men and women to them. I reckon they don't think we're children of God."
"That's it," Hertha cried, "and how could I live with any one who thought that?"
"They all think it," Tom answered.
"No, they don't," said Hertha angrily; "my teachers didn't at school."
"They were women," Tom replied. "Women have more religion than men."
He rose from his seat and stretched himself, his long arms extended, his short coat-sleeves revealing a great expanse of wrist and hand.
"What are you growing so tall for?" Hertha asked, looking up at him.
"I reckon I have to." He dropped his arms to his sides. "It's a mistake fer it takes a lot of coat and pants to cover me, and in the bed the sheet don't come up high enough and the blanket's forever slipping by on the floor."