I'd gone to the Lincoln Theatre last night and I began thinking of how the audience had applauded so loudly for the two white acrobats. The other acts had been all-coloured-singing and dancing and black-face comedy. I thought at the time how the white folks were still showing everybody how strong they were and how we spooks were still trying to prove how happy we were. But what got me was the way the coloured audience clapped their hands off for the white acrobats-not so much just because they were white, although that was reason enough in itself, I thought-but because one of the boys was blind.

'He's blind,' I heard some woman in back of me whisper. 'He is? Which one?'

'The little one.'

'Is dat so? Well, ain't he spry?'

It went all through the audience: The little one's blind.

We're a wonderful, goddamned race, I thought. Simpleminded, generous, sympathetic sons of bitches. We're sorry for everybody but ourselves; the worse the white folks treat us the more we love 'em. Ella Mae laying me because I wasn't married and she figured she had enough for me and Henry too; and a black audience clapping its hands off for a blind white acrobat.

I thought of Ben telling Conway out at the yard, 'I was just asking the man a question, fellow, I ain't going to steal your white man. I know that's the one thing a Negro won't forgive you for-that's stealing his prize white man.'

What I was trying to do now was to keep from thinking about Alice, just to drift on my thoughts as long as they didn't touch her. I was scared if I thought about her now I'd begin to wonder, maybe to doubt her. She'd broken a date with me last night; that's why I'd gone to the Lincoln.

The next thing I knew I had opened my eyes and was looking at her picture on my dressing table.