Wherever I wandered on Canal Street, on the wharves, in the French quarter, out to the battlefield where Jackson had won a victory over Packenham, Dorothy was habitually in my thoughts.  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.  A kind of paralysis was upon my thinking.  And then I would leave my room and wander into the streets, visit the cafes, and find temporary forgetfulness in lively scenes and gay faces.

And one night when I was in the French quarter at dinner I became alert to the conversation of two men sitting at a near table.  They spoke familiarly to each other, almost as brothers.  But I sensed that they had been separated for some time.  At last one of them made references to France and England, and I concluded that he had been abroad.  Both were typical planters, with goatees and broad hats, coats of elegant material but widely and loosely tailored.  As I followed their words almost the whole condition of America unfolded itself to my understanding.

The tenor of the talk was concerning cotton, the demand for it abroad and at home, and the effect that that demand had upon the South and the whole social and political life of America.  Within thirty years past all the Northern States but Delaware had abolished slavery.  What would have kept slavery alive after all except for the cotton gin and Eli Whitney, what but England’s great machinery development for spinning and weaving, which made the demand for cotton more and more?