He had not thought that white people had such troubles;
yet, he reflected, why not? They, too, were human.
"I suppose you hear from the school?" he ventured after a pause.
"Why, yes--not directly--but Zora used to speak of it."
Bles looked up quickly.
"Zora?"
"Yes. Didn't you see her while she was here? She has gone back now."
Then the gate opened, the crowd surged through, sweeping them apart, and
next moment he was alone.
Alwyn turned slowly away. He forgot the friend he was to meet. He forgot
everything but the field of the Silver Fleece. It rose shadowy there in
the pale concourse, swaying in ghostly breezes. The purple of its
flowers mingled with the silver radiance of tendrils that trembled
across the hurrying throng, like threads of mists along low hills. In
its midst rose a dark, slim, and quivering form. She had been here--here
in Washington! Why had he not known? What was she doing? "She has gone
back now"--back to the Sun and the Swamp, back to the Burden.
Why should not he go back, too? He walked on thinking. He had failed.
His apparent success had been too sudden, too overwhelming, and when he
had faced the crisis his hand had trembled. He had chosen the Right--but
the Right was ineffective, impotent, almost ludicrous. It left him
shorn, powerless, and in moral revolt. The world had suddenly left him,
as the vision of Carrie Wynn had left him, alone, a mere clerk, an
insignificant cog in the great grinding wheel of humdrum drudgery.
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