"Something happened?" Wyeth echoed.
"Yes. Something happened." She was silent now, and gazed again out of the window.
"Heredity."
"Heredity?" And still he did not understand. He could not be patient longer. "Who was this man—that is, ah—what was his name. I don't think I ever heard of him—a colored man?"
She looked straight at him now, without a change of expression, and answered: "He was not colored!"
"Not colored?"
"I should have said," she corrected, "that he didn't go as colored.... He passed for white."
"Oh...."
"But that was not it—heredity."
Wyeth said nothing.