"Mr. Porter: When this train is within a fifteen minutes' run of Almaville please pass through this coach and so announce. Then stand on the platform leading from this coach to the coach in which the Negroes have their section.
"From the Girl that Looked at You."
The first part of this request the porter concluded to comply with, but he registered all sorts of vows to the effect that he would never be found waiting on any platform for any white girl. He murmered to himself.
"My young lady, you may sign yourself, 'From the girl that looked at you;' but with all due respect my signature is 'The boy that wasn't there.'"
Again he looked out of the window at the same sombre trees and into the gloom of their shadows, and he put his hand in his collar as though it was already too tight.
"No, my God!" he said softly. Tearing the note to shreds, he fed it to the winds, lowered the window and began to whistle.
When the train was in the designated distance of Almaville the porter entered the coach for whites in which sat the young woman who wrote the note. "Fifteen minutes and the train pulls into Almaville," he exclaimed, as he walked the aisle in an opposite direction to that desired by the young woman. She at once understood and saw that she must depend upon herself.
The fragile, beautiful creature arose and by holding to the ends of the various seats staggered to the door. She opened it and by tenacious clinging to the iron railings on the platform managed to pull herself across to the adjoining coach. Passing through the smoker for the white men she entered the Negro section. With a half stifled sob she threw herself into the lap of the Negro girl and nestled her face on her shoulder.
The young woman from the coach for the whites now tossed back the veil of the Negro girl and the two girls kissed, looking each other in the eyes, pledging in that kiss and in that look, the unswerving, eternal devotion of heart to heart whatever the future might bring. The young woman now slowly turned away and went toward the coach whence she came, assisted by the wondering conductor.
From large dark eyes whose great native beauty was heightened by that tender look of the soul that they harbored, the Negro girl stood watching her visitor depart. The grace of her form that was somewhat taller and somewhat larger than that of the average girl, stamped her as a creature that could be truthfully called sublimely beautiful, thought Ensal. Whatever complexion on general principles Ensal thought to be the most attractive, he was now ready to concede that the delicate light brown color of this girl could not be surpassed in beauty.
If, incredulous as to the accuracy of the estimate of her beauty forced upon one at the first glance, an effort was made to analyze that face and study its parts separately, each feature was seen to have a beauty all its own.