toward a chest of drawers where he kept his checkbook.
“Cissie, if I can he of any service to you in a substantial way, I'll be more than glad to—”
She put out a hand and stopped him; then talked on in justification of her determination to go away.
“I just can't endure it any longer, Peter.” She shuddered again. “I can't stand Niggertown, or this side of town—any of it. They—they have no feeling for a colored girl, Peter, not—not a speck!” She rave a gasp, and after a moment plunged on into her wrongs: “When—when one of us even walks past on the street, they—they whistle and say a-all kinds of things out loud, j-just as if w-we weren't there at all. Th- they don't c-care; we're just n-nigger w-women.” Cissie suddenly began sobbing with a faint catching noise, her full bosom shaken by the spasms; her tears slowly welling over. She drew out a handkerchief with a part of its lace edge gone, and wiped her eyes and cheeks, holding the bit of cambric in a ball in her palm, like a negress, instead of in her fingers, like a white woman, as she had been taught. Then she drew a deep breath, swallowed, and became more composed.
Peter stood looking in helpless anger at this representative of all women of his race.
“Cissie, that's street-corner scum—the dirty sewage—”
“They make you feel naked,” went on Cissie in the
