The White People

Man has not learned all the laws of nature yet. Nature’s a grand, rich, endless thing, always unrolling her scroll with writings that seem new on it. They’re not new. They were always written there. But they were not unrolled. Never a law broken, never a new law, only laws read with stronger eyes.

“Am I strange!” I said, softly.

“Yes, thank God!” he answered.

Nothing is an accident. We make everything happen ourselves: the wrong things because we do not know or care whether we are wrong or right, the right ones because we unconsciously or consciously choose the right even in the midst of our ignorance.

I had always seemed so detached from every one. I had not been miserable about it, and I had not complained to myself; I only accepted the detachment as part of my kind of life.

In my secret heart I began to ask myself if it could be true that they made me feel a little as if I somehow belonged to some one.

All at once I knew I should not be afraid of him. He would understand that I could not help being shy, that it was only my nature, and that if I said things awkwardly my meanings were better than my words.

But there was one man who did not write as if he believed the world had begun and would end with him.

But; any one could overlook me—an insignificant, thin girl who slipped in and out of places and sat and stared and listened to other people instead of saying things herself; I liked to look on and be forgotten.

I was only full of wonder and happiness. I was a girl, and he had been my only hero;

strode up and down