Page:Rowland--In the shadow.djvu/175

 the lithe luxuriance of her figure. Her face, oval, white as alabaster, yet with a fine, firm texture of skin which betokened health, was almost perfect in feature, but lavish in a fullness of expression almost startling. The lips, curved slightly upward at the corners, were of the color of red-hot iron; the nose, Grecian, alluringly retroussé, with delicate Eurasian nostrils aquiver at each passing emotion—but the eyes, of indescribable color, perhaps because they contained all shades, with pupils which swelled and shrank and oscillated like those of a bird which flies through the banded glare of a black, tropic forest! Her hair was fine as smoke, of the color of the smoke which eddies from a crucible of molten copper, and, in its changeless hue in even light, Dessalines saw with initiate eye the shadows of the Dark Continent.

None but a negro could have recognized the stray corpuscles of negro blood; the popular fallacies of finger nails, faded tints of palm, lividity of mucous membranes all defied detection; only the blood cry of the race could have set in vibration the chords responding to the call of kind.

"Monsieur flatters!" Madam Fouchere's long lashes swept down to hide her chameleon eyes. Dessalines observed that they were darker than her hair and of a rich shade, deeper in tone than absolute black. Her skin was of the pallor of white objects just before a storm.

"Pardon, but that is impossible. In Paris one speaks of the Doctor and Madam Fouchere as Night and Morning; can one then flatter the dawn?"

Again the velvety curtains swept upward for an instant, the indescribable eyes sent him such a gleam as might flare from a furnace when the door was opened, 165