"I wondered why you started," and he again looked ahead. They were across it now, and approaching Wabash Avenue. He turned into this, to where his aunt lived some distance out in the most exclusive part of its residence section.
Agnes, sitting by his side, despite the excitement, the great buildings and fine streets, was thinking of the past, and of what she had just seen. Negroes, Negroes, and that would have been her life had she married Jean Baptiste. All such was foreign to her, but she could estimate what it would have meant. She was sure she could never have become accustomed to such an association, it wouldn't have seemed natural. And then she thought of Jean Baptiste, the man. Oh, of him, it was always so different. In her mind he was like no other person in the world. How strange, and singularly sweet had been her acquaintance with him. Never had she understood any one as she understood him. She tried to shut him out of her life, for the time had come, and she must. But could she? When she dared close her eyes she seemed to see him more clearly.
The car had stopped now, and he was lifting her out before a large house that stood back from the street some distance in sumptuous splendor. As they went up the walkway, the large front doors parted, and a handsome elderly woman came forth. Upon her face was written refinement and culture.
"Oh, aunt, here we are."
"I saw you coming because I was watching," said his aunt, coming forward, the personification of dignity. She held out her arms, and Agnes felt herself being embraced and kissed. Her head was in a whirl. How could she readily become accustomed to such without displaying awkwardness.
Arm in arm they mounted the steps, were met by the butler, who took her bags, and a moment later she found herself in a large, richly furnished room.
"Come now, dear," he said, and led her to a couch. She heard his aunt going upstairs to prepare her room, and the next moment she felt him draw her to him, and whatever difference there was in this convenient life, all men loved alike.
Jean Baptiste lingered late at the Keystone bar. He was alone in the world, he felt, so company of the kind about seemed the best, and was, at least, diverting. It was twelve o'clock and after when he left. He still retained his room at the attorney's residence, and to this he strolled slowly. He attempted to formulate some plans in his mind, and after a time it occurred to him that he should go back West to Gregory. He had hired more than seven hundred fifty acres put into wheat. He hadn't heard how it was, or whether there was any wheat there or not. But he had seen in the papers that a drought had affected much of the crop in Kansas and Nebraska. He half heartedly assumed that it would naturally hit his country also. If so, there was nothing left for him to do but leave that section. But he would depart from the city on the morrow and see what there was up there, and with this settled in his mind, he quickened his step, and hurried to his room.
He turned into the right number, as he thought, but upon trying to insert the key in the lock he found that he had made a mistake. He glanced up in confusion and almost uttered a cry. It was not the attorney's home, but that of the Reverend McCarthy.