She pointed dramatically to a table.
“There is the fan from Bengy Wade in a package. To-morrow it goes back to him. There is a note to Mrs. Grayson, declining her invitation. If I go to Westbrook I shall not ride Persiflage. I have turned over a new leaf. But the degradation of thinking of the record on the old ones! If I could only tear them out instead of trying to fold them down. I see it all now. He has made me see it all. He has made me despise myself until I see the way I look in his eyes; until I seem the same in my own. Janet, what can I do?”
The girl’s head bent on the arm of the chair, as her body was shaken with sobs. The other put out her hand and gently stroked her heavy hair.
“Don’t you exaggerate?”
“Did you,” Miriam panted, “when you said what you did to Mr. Leeds? Did you make my blackness less black than it should be—did you concede to me any saving light?”
“I did not know. If I can do anything now——”
“You must not speak to him,” Miriam cried, sitting up abruptly. “There would be no use. When the seeds of distrust have been sown they will grow, even if the weeds crowd out everything else.”
“That must be my part,” Miriam answered, more calmly. “Only one course is left. It’s funny,” she smiled, swiftly, through her tears. “There is poetic justice in it. I can do only one thing. It is my retribution.”