Dark Princess: A Romance

By W. E. B. Du Bois

Disillusioned with the United States after being expelled from medical school because of his race, Matthew Towns, a young African American man, moves to Berlin, Germany, where he meets and falls in love with Kautilya, a princess from India. They become members of an international coalition against white imperialism.
Civil rights activist and NAACP cofounder W. E. B. Du Bois dedicated his life to illuminating racial bigotry’s historical, economic, and cultural consequences. Dark Princess, written in the genre of fantasy romance fiction, offered Du Bois an opportunity to fulfill his greatest ambitions, dreams, and longings: eradicating prejudice and discrimination against African Americans and people of color. Although it was not well received when it was first published, the novel is a powerful indictment of white supremacy — and a stirring call for international solidarity among people of color. It has since been rediscovered by scholars and critics who appreciate its bold vision and historical significance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: May 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9780486854304

W. E. B. Du Bois

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was an African American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, and socialist. Born in Massachusetts, he was raised in Great Barrington, an integrated community. He studied at the University of Berlin and at Harvard, where he became the first African American scholar to earn a doctorate. He worked as a professor at Atlanta University, a historically black institution, and was one of the leaders of the Niagara Movement, which advocated for equal rights and opposed Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta compromise. In 1909, he cofounded the NAACP and served for years as the editor of its official magazine The Crisis. In addition to his activism against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and other forms of discrimination and segregation, Du Bois authored such influential works as The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Black Reconstruction in America (1935). A lifelong opponent of racism and a committed pacifist, Du Bois advocated for socialism as a means of replacing racial capitalism in America and around the world. In the 1920s, he used his role at The Crisis to support the artists of the Harlem Renaissance and sought to emphasize the role of African Americans in shaping American society in his book The Gift of Black Folk (1924).

Book preview

Part I

The Exile

August, 1923

Summer is come with bursting flower and promise of perfect fruit. Rain is rolling down Nile and Niger. Summer sings on the sea where giant ships carry busy worlds, while mermaids swarm the shores. Earth is pregnant. Life is big with pain and evil and hope. Summer in blue New York; summer in gray Berlin; summer in the red heart of the world!

I

M

ATTHEW

T

OWNS

was in a cold white fury. He stood on the deck of the Orizaba looking down on the flying sea. In the night America had disappeared and now there was nothing but waters heaving in the bright morning. There were many passengers walking, talking, laughing; but none of them spoke to Matthew. They spoke about him, noting his tall, lean form and dark brown face, the stiff, curled mass of his sinewy hair, and the midnight of his angry eyes.

They spoke about him, and he was acutely conscious of every word. Each word heard and unheard pierced him and quivered in the quick. Yet he leaned stiff and grim, gazing into the sea, his back toward all. He saw the curled grace of the billows, the changing blues and greens; and he saw, there at the edge of the world, certain shining shapes that leapt and played.

Then they changed—always they changed; and there arose the great cool height of the room at the University of Man­hattan. Again he stood before the walnut rail that separated student and Dean. Again he felt the bewilderment, the surge of hot surprise.

I cannot register at all for obstetrics?

No, said the Dean quietly, his face growing red. I’m sorry, but the committee—

But—but—why, I’m Towns. I’ve already finished two years—I’ve ranked my class. I took honors—why—I—This is my Junior year—I must—

He was sputtering with amazement.

I’m sorry.

Hell! I’m not asking your pity, I’m demanding—

The Dean’s lips grew thin and hard, and he sent the shaft home as if to rid himself quickly of a hateful task.

Well—what did you expect? Juniors must have obstetrical work. Do you think white women patients are going to have a nigger doctor delivering their babies?

Then Matthew’s fury had burst its bounds; he had thrown his certificates, his marks and commendations straight into the drawn white face of the Dean and stumbled out. He came out on Broadway with its wide expanse, and opposite a little park. He turned and glanced up at the gray piles of tan build­ings, threatening the sky, which were the University’s great medical center. He stared at them. Then with bowed head he plunged down 165th Street. The gray-blue Hudson lay be­neath his feet, and above it piled the Palisades upward in gray and green. He walked and walked: down the curving drive be­tween high homes and the Hudson; by graveyard and palace; tomb and restaurant; beauty and smoke. All the afternoon he walked, all night, and into the gray dawn of another morning.

II

I

N AFTER YEARS

when Matthew looked back upon this first sea voyage, he remembered it chiefly as the time of sleep; of days of long, long rest and thought, after work and hurry and rage. He was indeed very tired. A year of the hardest kind of study had been followed by a summer as clerical assistant in a colored industrial insurance office, in the heat of Washington. Thence he had hurried straight to the university with five hundred dollars of tuition money in his pocket; and now he was sailing to Europe.

He had written his mother—that tall, gaunt, brown mother, hard-sinewed and somber-eyed, carrying her years unbroken, who still toiled on the farm in Prince James County, Virginia—he had written almost curtly: I’m through. I cannot and will not stand America longer. I’m off. I’ll write again soon. Don’t worry. I’m well. I love you. Then he had packed his clothes, given away his books and instruments, and sailed in mid-August on the first ship that offered after that long tramp of tears and rage, after days of despair. And so here he was.

Where was he going? He glanced at the pale-faced man who asked him. I don’t know, he answered shortly. The good-natured gentle­man stared, nonplused. Matthew turned away. Where was he going? The ship was going to Antwerp. But that, to Matthew, was sheer accident. He was going away first of all. After that? Well, he had thought of France. There they were at least civilized in their prejudices. But his French was poor. He had studied German because

his teachers regarded German medicine as superior to all other. He would then go to Germany. From there? Well, there was Moscow. Perhaps they could use a man in Russia whose heart was hate. Perhaps he would move on to the Near or Far East and find hard work and peace. At any rate he was going somewhere; and suddenly letting his strained nerves go, he dragged his chair to a sheltered nook apart and slept.

To the few who approached him at all, Matthew was boor­ish and gruff. He knew that he was unfair, but he could not help it. All the little annoyances, which in healthier days he would have laughed away, avoided, or shortly forgotten, now piled themselves on his sore soul. The roommate assigned him discovered that his companion was colored and quickly de­camped with his baggage. A Roumanian who spoke little Eng­lish, and had not learned American customs, replaced him.

Matthew entered the dining-room with nerves a-quiver. Every eye caught him during the meal—some, curiously; some, derisively; some, in half-contemptuous surprise. He felt and measured all, looking steadily into his plate. On one side sat an old and silent man. To the empty seat on the other side he heard acutely a swish of silk approach—a pause and a con­sultation. The seat remained empty. At the next meal he was placed in a far corner with people too simple or poor or un­important to protest. He heaved a sigh to have it over and ate thereafter in silence and quickly.

So at last life settled down, soothed by the sea—the rhythm and song of the old, old sea. He slept and read and slept; stared at the water; lived his life again to its wild climax; put down repeatedly the cold, hard memory; and drifting, slept again.

Yet always, as he rose from the deep seas of sleep and reverie, the silent battle with his fellows went on. Now he yearned fiercely for some one to talk to; to talk and talk and explain and prove and disprove. He glimpsed faces at times, intelligent, masterful. They had brains; if they knew him they would choose him as companion, friend; but they did not know him. They did not want to know him. They glanced at him momentarily and then looked away. They were afraid to be noticed noticing him.

And he? He would have killed himself rather than have them dream he would accept a greeting, much less a confi­dence. He looked past and through and over them with blank unconcern. So much so that a few—simpler souls, themselves wandering alone hither and thither in this aimless haphazard group of a fugitive week—ventured now and then to under­stand: I never saw none of you fellers like you— began one amiable Italian. No? answered Matthew briefly and walked away.

You’re not lonesome? asked a New England merchant, adding hastily, I’ve always been interested in your people.

Yes, said Matthew with an intonation that stopped fur­ther conversation along that line.

No, he growled at an insulted missionary, I don’t be­lieve in God—never did—do you?

And yet all the time he was sick at heart and yearning. If but one soul with sense, knowledge, and decency had firmly pierced his awkwardly hung armor, he could have helped make these long hard days human. And one did, a moment, now and then—a little tow-haired girl of five or six with great eyes. She came suddenly on him one day: Won’t you play ball with me? He started, smiled, and looked down. He loved children. Then he saw the mother ­approaching—typically Middle-West American, smartly dressed and conscious of her social in­feriority. Slowly his smile faded; quickly he walked away. Yet nearly every day thereafter the child smiled shyly at him as though they shared a secret, and he smiled slowly back; but he was careful never to see the elaborate and most ex­clusive mother.

Thus they came to green Plymouth and passed the fortress walls of Cherbourg and, sailing by merry vessels and white cliffs, rode on to the Scheldt. All day they crept past fields and villages, ships and windmills, up to the slender cathedral tower of Antwerp.

III

S

ITTING IN THE

Viktoria Café, on the Unter den Linden, Berlin, Matthew looked again at the white leviathan—at that mighty ­organization of white folk against which he felt himself so bitterly in revolt. It was the same vast, remorseless machine in Berlin as in New York. Of course, there were differences—differences which he felt like a tingling pain. He had on the street here no sense of public insult; he was treated as he was dressed, and today he had dressed carefully, wearing the new suit made for the opening school term; he had on his newest dark crimson tie that burned with the red in his smooth brown face; he carried cane and gloves, and he had walked into this fashionable café with an air. He knew that he would be served, politely and without question.

Yes, in Europe he could at least eat where he wished so long as he paid. Yet the very thought made him angry; con­ceive a man outcast in his own native land! And even here, how long could he pay, he who sat with but two hundred dollars in the world, with no profession, no work, no friends, no country? Yes, these folks treated him as a man—or rather, they did not, on looking at him, treat him as less than a man. But what of it? They were white. What would they say if he asked for work? Or a chance for his brains? Or a daughter in marriage? There was a blonde and blue-eyed girl at the next table catching his eye. Faugh! She was for public sale and thought him a South American, an Egyptian, or a rajah with money. He turned quickly away.

Oh, he was lonesome; lonesome and homesick with a dread­ful homesickness. After all, in leaving white, he had also left black America—all that he loved and knew. God! he never dreamed how much he loved that soft, brown world which he had so carelessly, so unregretfully cast away. What would he not give to clasp a dark hand now, to hear a soft Southern roll of speech, to kiss a brown cheek? To see warm, brown, crinkly hair and laughing eyes. God—he was lonesome. So utterly, terribly lonesome. And then—he saw the Princess!

Many, many times in after years he tried to catch and rebuild that first wildly beautiful phantasy which the girl’s face stirred in him. He knew well that no human being could be quite as beautiful as she looked to him then. He could never quite recapture the first ecstasy of the picture, and yet always even the memory thrilled and revived him. Never after that first glance was he or the world quite the same.

First and above all came that sense of color: into this world of pale yellowish and pinkish parchment, that absence or negation

of color, came, suddenly, a glow of golden brown skin. It was darker than sunlight and gold; it was lighter and livelier than brown. It was a living, glowing crimson, veiled beneath brown flesh. It called for no light and suffered no shadow, but glowed softly of its own inner radiance.

Then came the sense of the woman herself: she was young and tall even when seated, and she bore herself above all with a singularly regal air. She was slim and lithe, gracefully curved. Unseeing, past him and into the struggling, noisy street, she was looking with eyes that were pools of night—liquid, translucent, haunting depths—whose brilliance made her face a glory and a dream.

Matthew pulled himself together and tried to act sensibly. Here—here in Berlin and but a few tables away, actually sat a radiantly beautiful woman, and she was colored. He could see the faultlessness of her dress. There was a hint of some­thing foreign and exotic in her simply draped gown of rich, creamlike silken stuff and in the graceful coil of her hand-fashioned turban. Her gloves were hung carelessly over her arm, and he caught a glimpse of slender-heeled slippers and sheer clinging hosiery. There was a flash of jewels on her hands and a murmur of beads in half-hidden necklaces. His young enthusiasm might overpaint and idealize her, but to the dullest and the oldest she was beautiful, beautiful. Who was she? What was she? How came this princess (for in some sense she must be royal) here in Berlin? Was she American? And how was he—

Then he became conscious that he had been listening to words spoken behind him. He caught a slap of American English from the terrace just back and beyond.

"Look, there’s that darky again. See her? Sitting over yonder by the post. Ain’t she some pippin? What? Get out! Listen! Bet you a ten-spot I get her number before she leaves this café. You’re on!

I know niggers, and I don’t mean per­haps. Ain’t I white. Watch my smoke!"

Matthew gripped the table. All that cold rage which still lay like lead beneath his heart began again to glow and burn. Action, action, it screamed—no running and sulking now—action! There was murder in his mind—murder, riot, and arson. He wanted just once to hit this white American in the jaw—to see him spinning over the tables, and then to walk out with his arm about the princess, through the midst of a gaping, scurrying white throng. He started to rise, and nearly upset his coffee cup.

Then he came to himself. No—no. That would not do. Surely the fellow would not insult the girl. He could count on no public opinion in Berlin as in New York to shield him in such an adventure. He would simply seek to force his com­pany on her in quite a natural way. After all, the café was filling. There were no empty tables, at least in the forward part of the room, and no one person had a right to a whole table; yet to approach any woman thus, when several tables with men offered seats, was to make a subtle advance; and to approach this woman?—puzzled and apprehensive, Matthew sat quietly and watched while he paid his waiter and slowly pulled on his gloves. He saw a young, smooth-faced American circle carelessly from behind him and saunter toward the door. Then he stopped, and turning, slowly came back toward the girl’s table. A cold sweat broke out over Matthew. A sick­ening fear fought with the fury in his heart. Suppose this girl, this beautiful girl, let the fresh American sit down and talk to her? Suppose? After all, who—what was she? To sit alone at a table in a European café—well, Matthew watched. The American approached, paused, looked about the café, and halted beside her table. He looked down and bowed, with his hand on the back of the empty chair.

The lady did not start nor speak. She glanced at him in­differently, unclasped her hands slowly, and then with no haste gathered up her things; she nodded to the waiter, fum­bled in her purse, and without another glance at the American, arose and passed slowly out. Matthew could have shouted.

But the American was not easily rebuffed by this show of indiffer­ence. Apparently he interpreted the movement quite another way. Waving covertly to his fellows, he arose leisurely, without ordering, tossed a bill to the waiter, and sauntered out after the lady. Matthew rose impetuously, and he felt that whole terrace table of men arise behind him.

The dark lady had left by the Friedrichstrass¸e door, and paused for the taxi which the gold-laced porter had sum­moned. She gave an address and already had her foot on the step. In a moment the American was by her side. Deftly he displaced the porter and bent with lifted hat. She turned on him in surprise and raised her little head. Still the American persisted with a smile, but his hand had hardly touched her elbow when Matthew’s fist caught him right between the smile and the ear. The American sat down on the sidewalk very suddenly.

Pedestrians paused. There was a commotion at the restau­rant door as several men rushed out, but the imposing porter was too quick; he had caught the eye and pocketed the bill of the lady. In a moment, evidently thinking the couple to­gether, he had handed both her and Matthew into the taxi, slammed the door, and they had whirled away. In a trice they fled down the Friedrichstrass¸e, left across the Französische, again left to Charlotten, and down the Linden. Matthew glanced anxiously back. They had been too quick, and there was apparently no pursuit. He leaned forward and spoke to the chauffeur, and they drove up to the curb near the Bran­denburg Gate and stopped.

Mille remerciements, Monsieur! said the lady.

Matthew searched his head for the right French answer as he started to step out, but could not remember: Oh—oh—don’t mention it, he stammered.

Ah—you are English? I thought you were French or Spanish!

She spoke clear-clipped English with perfect accent, to Matthew’s intense relief. Suppose she had spoken only French! He hastened to explain: I am an American Negro.

An American Negro? The lady bent forward in sudden interest and stared at him. An American Negro! she re­peated. How ­singular—how very singular! I have been thinking of American Negroes all day! Please do not leave me yet. Can you spare a moment? Chauffeur, drive on!

IV

A

S THEY SAT

at tea in the Tiergarten, under the tall black trees, Matthew’s story came pouring out:

"I was born in Virginia, Prince James County, where we black folk own most of the land. My mother, now many years a widow, farmed her little forty acres to educate me, her only child. There was a good school there with teachers from Hampton, the great boarding-school not far away. I was young when I finished the course and was sent to Hampton. There I was unhappy. I wanted to study for a profession, and they insisted on making me a farmer. I hated the farm. My mother finally sent me North. I boarded first with a cousin and then with friends in New York and went through high school and through the City College. I specialized on the pre­medical course, and by working nights and summers and play­ing football (amateur, of course, but paid excellent ‘expenses’ in fact), I was able to enter the new great medical school of the University of Manhattan, two years ago.

It was a hard pull, but I plunged the line. I had to have scholarships, and I got them, although one Southern profes­sor gave me the devil of a time.

The lady interrupted. Southern? she asked. What do you mean by ‘Southern’?

I mean from the former slave States—although the phrase isn’t just fair. Some of our most professional Southerners are Northern-born.

The lady still looked puzzled, but Matthew talked on.

"This man didn’t mean to be unfair, but he honestly didn’t believe ‘niggers’ had brains, even if he had the evidence before him. He flunked me on principle. I protested and finally had the matter up to the Dean; I showed all my other marks and got a re-examination at an extra cost that deprived me of a new overcoat. I gave him a perfect paper, and he had to acknowledge it was ‘good,’ although he made careful inquiries to see if I had not in some way cribbed dishonestly.

"At last I got my mark and my scholarship. During my second year there were rumors among the few colored students that we would not be allowed to finish our course, because objection had been made to colored students in the clinical hospital, especially with white women patients. I laughed. It was, I was sure, a put-up rumor to scare us off. I knew black men who had gone through other New York medical schools which had become parts of this great new consolidated school. There had been no real trouble. The patients never objected—only Southern students and the few Southern professors. Some of the trustees had mentioned the matter but had been shamed into silence.

"Then, too, I was firm in my Hampton training; desert and hard work were bound to tell. Prejudice was a miasma that character burned away. I believed this thoroughly. I had lit­erally pounded my triumphant way through school and life. Of course I had met insult and rebuff here and there, but I ignored them, laughed at them, and went my way. Those black people who cringed and cowered, complained of failure and ‘no chance,’ I despised—weaklings, cowards, fools! Go to work! Make a way! Compel recognition!

"In the medical school there were two other colored men in my class just managing to crawl through. I covertly sneered at them, avoided them. What business had they there with no ability or training? I see differently now. I see there may have been a dozen reasons why Phillips of Mississippi could neither spell nor read correctly and why Jones of Georgia could not count. They had had no hard-working mother, no Hampton, no happy accidents of fortune to help them on.

"While I? I rose to triumph after triumph. Just as in college I had been the leading athlete and had ridden many a time aloft on white students’ shoulders, so now, working until two o’clock in the morning and rising at six, I took prize after prize—the Mitchel Honor in physiology, the Welbright medal in pathology, the Shores Prize for biological chemistry. I ranked the second-year class at last commencement, and at our annual dinner at the Hotel Pennsylvania, sat at the head table with the medal men. I remember one classmate. He was from Atlanta, and he hesitated and whispered when he found his seat was beside me. Then he sat down like a man and held out his hand. ‘Towns,’ he said, ‘I never associated with a Negro before who wasn’t a servant or laborer; but I’ve heard of you, and you’ve made a damned fine record. I’m proud to sit by you.’

I shook his hand and choked. He proved my life-theory. Character and brains were too much for prejudice. Then the blow fell. I had slaved all summer. I was worked to a frazzle. Reckon my hard-­headedness had a hand there, too. I wouldn’t take a menial job—Pullman porter, waiter, bell-boy, boat steward—good money, but I waved them aside. No! Bad for the soul, and I might meet a white fellow student.

The lady smiled. Meet a fellow student—did none of them work, too?

"O yes, but seldom as menials, while Negroes in America are always expected to be menials. It’s natural, but—no, I couldn’t do it. So at last I got a job in Washington in the medical statistics department of the National Benefit. This is one of our big insurance concerns. O yes, we’ve got a number of them; prosperous, too. It was hard work, indoors, poor light and air; but I was interested—worked overtime, learned the game, and gave my thought and ideas.

"They promoted me and paid me well, and by the middle of August I had my tuition and book money saved. They wanted me to stay with them permanently; at least until fall. But I had other plans. There was a summer school of two terms at the college, and I figured that if I entered the second term I could get a big lead in my obstetrical work and stand a better show for the Junior prizes.

I had applied in the spring for admission to the Stern Maternity Hospital, which occupied three floors of our center building. My name had been posted as accepted. I was tired to death, but I rushed back to New York to register. Perhaps if I had been rested, with cool head and nerves—well, I wasn’t. I made the office of the professor of obstetrics on a hot afternoon, August 10, I well remember. He looked at me in surprise.

" ‘You can’t work in the Stern Hospital—the places are all taken.’

" ‘I have one of the places,’ I pointed out. He seemed puzzled and annoyed.

" ‘You’ll have to see the Dean,’ he said finally.

"I was angry and rushed to the Dean’s office. I saw that we had a new Dean—a Southerner.

Then the blow fell. Seemingly, during the summer the 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 to cer­tain courses, particularly in obstetrics. The Dean was to break the news by letter as students applied for these courses. By applying early for the summer 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

T

HEY 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 faint air of haughtiness and was 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 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 manner. It was overpowering for Matthew, and yet stimulating. So his story came pouring out before he knew or cared to whom he was speaking. All the loneliness of long, lonely days clamored for speech, all the pent-up resentment choked for words.

The lady listened at first with polite but conscious sym­pathy; then she bent forward more and more eagerly, but always with restraint, with that mastery of body and soul that never for a moment slipped away, and yet with so evident a sympathy and comprehension that it set Matthew’s head swimming. She swept him almost imperiously with her eyes—those great wide orbs of darkening light. His own eyes lifted and fell before them; lifted and fell, until at last he looked past them and talked to the tall green and black oaks.

And yet there was never anything personal in her all-sweep­ing glance or anything self-conscious in the form that bent toward him. She never seemed in the slightest way conscious of herself. She arranged nothing, glanced at no detail of her dress, smoothed no wisp of hair. She seemed at once uncon­scious of her beauty and charm, and at the same time assuming it as a fact, but of no especial importance. She had no little feminine ways; she used her eyes apparently only for seeing, yet seemed to see all.

Matthew had the feeling that her steady, full, radiant gaze that enveloped and almost burned him, saw not him but the picture he was painting and the thing that the picture meant. He warmed with such an audience and painted with clean, sure lines. Only once or twice did she interrupt, and when he had ended, she still sat full-faced, flooding him with the startling beauty of her eyes. Her hands clasped and unclasped slowly, her lips were slightly parted, the curve of her young bosom rose and fell.

And you ran away! she said musingly. Matthew winced and started to explain, but she continued. Singular, she said. How singular that I should meet you; and today. There was no coquetry in her tone. It was evidently not of him, the hero, of whom she was thinking, but of him, the group, the fact, the whole drama.

And you are two—three millions? she asked.

Ten or twelve, he answered.

You ran away, she repeated, half in meditation.

What else could I do? he demanded impulsively. Cringe and crawl?

Of course the Negroes have no hospitals?

Of course, they have—many, but not attached to the great schools. What can Howard (rated as our best colored school) do with thousands, when whites have millions? And if we come out poorly taught and half equipped, they sneer at ‘nigger’ doctors.

And no Negroes are admitted to the hospitals of New York?

O yes—hundreds. But if we colored students are confined to colored patients, we surrender a principle.

What principle?

Equality.

Oh—equality.

She sat for a full moment, frowning and looking at him. Then she fumbled away at her beads and brought out a tiny jeweled box. Absently she took out a cigarette, lighted it, and offered him one. Matthew took it, but he was a little troubled. White women in his experience smoked of course—but colored women? Well—but it was delicious to see her great, somber eyes veiled in hazy blue.

She sighed at last and said: "I do not quite understand. But at any rate I see that you American Negroes are not a mere amorphous handful. You are a nation! I never dreamed—But I must explain.

I want you to dine with me and some friends tomorrow night at my apartment. We represent—in­deed I may say frankly, we are—a part of a great committee of the darker peoples; of those who suffer under the arrogance and tyranny of the white world."

Matthew leaned forward with an eager thrill. And you have plans? Some vast emancipation of the world?

She did not answer directly, but continued: "We have among us spokesmen of nearly all these groups—of them or for them—except American Negroes. Some of us think these former slaves unready for coöperation, but I just returned from Moscow last week. At our last dinner I was telling of a report I read there from America that astounded me and gave me great pleasure—for I almost alone have insisted that your group was worthy of coöperation. In Russia I heard some­thing, and it happened so curiously that—after sharp discus­sion about your people but last night (for I will not conceal from you that there is still doubt and opposition in our ranks)—that I should meet you today.

"I had gone up to the Palace to see the exhibition of new ­paintings—you have not seen it? You must. All the time I was thinking absently of Black America, and one picture there in­tensified and stirred my thoughts—a weird massing of black shepherds and a star. I dropped into the Viktoria, almost un­consciously, because the tea there is good and the muffins quite unequaled. I know that I should not go there unac­companied, even in the day; white women may, but brown women seem strangely attractive to white men, especially Americans; and this is the open season for them.

Twice before I have had to put Americans in their place. I went quite unconsciously and noted nothing in particular until that impossible young man sat down at my table. I did not know he had followed me out. Then you knocked him into the gutter quite beautifully. It had never happened before that a stranger of my own color should offer me protection in Europe. I had a curious sense of some great inner meaning to your act—some world movement. It seemed almost that the Powers of Heaven had bent to give me the knowledge which I was groping for; and so I invited you, that I might hear and know more.

She rose, insisted on paying the bill herself. You are my guest, you see. It is late, and I must go. Then, tomorrow night at eight. My card and address—Oh, I quite forgot. May I have your name?

Matthew had no card. But he wrote in her tiny memoran­dum book with its golden filigree, Matthew Towns, Exile, Hotel Roter Adler.

She held out her hand, half turning to go. Her slender­ness made her look taller than she was. The curved line of her flowed sinuously from neck to ankle. She held her right hand high, palm down, the long fingers drooping, and a ruby flamed dark crimson on her forefinger. Matthew reached up and shook the hand heartily. He had, as he did it, a vague feeling that he took her by surprise. Perhaps he shook hands too hard, for her hand was very little and frail. Perhaps she did not mean to shake hands—but then, what did she mean?

She was gone. He took out her card and read it. There was a little coronet and under it, engraved in flowing script, H.R.H. the Princess Kautilya of Bwodpur, India. Below was written, Lützower Ufer, No. 12.

VI

M

ATTHEW