trustees had decided gradually to exclude Negroes from the college. In the case of students already in the course, they were to be kept from graduation by a refusal to admit them a certain course, particularly in obstetrics. The Dean was to break the news by letter as students applied for the course, I had been accepted before the decision; so now he had to tell me. He hated the task, I could see. But I was too surprised, disgusted, furious. He said that I could not enter, and he told me brutally why. I threw my papers in his face and left. All my fine theories of race and prejudice lay in ruins. My life was overturned. America was impossible—unthinkable. I ran away, and here I am.”
V
They had sat an hour drinking tea in the Tiergarten, that mightiest park in Europe with its lofty trees, its cool dark shade, its sense of withdrawal from the world. He had not meant to be so voluble, so self-revealing. Perhaps the lady had deftly encouraged confidences in her high, but gracious way. Perhaps the mere sight of her smooth brown skin had made Matthew assume sympathy. There was something at once inviting and aloof in the young woman who sat opposite him. She had the air and carriage of one used to homage and yet receiving it indifferently as a right. With all her gentle manner and thoughtfulness, she had a certain fainty air of haughtiness an dwas ever slightly remote.
She was “colored” and yet not at all colored in his intimate sense. Her beauty as he saw it near had seemed even more striking; those thin, smooth fingers moving about the silver had known no work; she was carefully groomed from her purple hair to her slim toe-tips, and yet with few accessories; he could not tell whether she used paint or powder. Her features were regular and delicate, and there was a tiny diamond in one nostril. But quite aside from all the details of face and jewels—her pearls, her rings, the old gold bracelet—above and beyond and much more than the sum of them all was the luminous radiance of her complete beauty, her glow of youth and strength behind that screen of a grand yet gracious matter. It was overpowering for Matthew, and yet stimulating. So his story came pouring out before he knew or cared to whom he
