But always a door
closed against any communication with her; anything to be done for her
as a remembrance of her generosity; any step to be taken toward making
whole what I conceived to be our wounded friendship. Should I write
Dorothy? But what? So many exquisite things in the shop windows: jewels,
artistries of silver and gold. How I longed to select something for
Dorothy! But the door was closed against it. In the antique shops lovely
tables, chests, writing desks! If I could only buy many of such things
for our home--Dorothy's and mine. But was that home to be? The door
softly closed.
And thus I went about the city. It was so colorful, so gay, so
continental, so unlike anything I had ever dreamed of. And all the while
I was trying to order my thoughts, wondering what I should do. And if
ever Douglas in his political ambitions got entangled, to his own
undoing, with this mass of human beings, white and black, moving about
the carcass of life, what was to be my fate, both on the score of my
individual lot, and as one of the units in this racial hostility, and
the political and economic forces that generated it?
I tried several times to write a letter to Dorothy. I could not find the
exact thing I wanted to say, or the words with which to express it. What
should I say? Should I urge Dorothy to a marriage with me? Should I
attempt to argue down her misgivings? Should I tell her that I would
return to Jacksonville and send Zoe away? Should I write Dorothy that I
relinquished any hope of making her my wife? I wrote letters of these
various imports and then destroyed them.
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