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Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963

"The Quest of the Silver Fleece A Novel"

Cresswell blushed.
"No, indeed," she answered; "I used to teach colored people."
She watched this new group gather: a business man, two fashionable
ladies, three college girls, a gray-haired colored woman, and a young
spectacled brown man, and then, to her surprise, Mrs. Vanderpool and
Zora.
Zora was scarcely seated when that strange sixth sense of hers told her
that something had happened, and it needed but a side-glance from Mrs.
Vanderpool to indicate what it was. She sat with folded hands and the
old dreamy look in her eyes. In one moment she lived it all again--the
red cabin, the moving oak, the sowing of the Fleece, and its fearful
reaping. And now, when she turned her head, she would see the woman who
was to marry Bles Alwyn. She had often dreamed of her, and had set a
high ideal. She wanted her to be handsome, well dressed, earnest and
good. She felt a sort of person proprietorship in her, and when at last
the quickened pulse died to its regular healthy beat, she turned and
looked and knew.
Caroline Wynn deemed it a part of the white world's education to
participate in meetings like this; doing so was not pleasant, but it
appealed to her cynicism and mocking sense of pleasure. She always
roused hostility as she entered: her gown was too handsome, her gloves
too spotless, her air had hauteur enough to be almost impudent in the
opinion of most white people.


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