Page:Rowland--In the shadow.djvu/63

 smooths the uneven surface of the ground. Let there be some object, larger and more fantastic in design, and the sleep, like the snow, instead of softening the contours, serves only to cloak its true shape; puzzles the mind, the eye, and renders it more sinister for this distortion.

Virginia would waken, fix her mind on cheerful topics, fall into a light sleep and promptly become the prey of the same bizarre fancies differently presented; the constant element was the face of Dessalines; sometimes scowling, sometimes sad, stricken, or perhaps luminous with purposeful strength and dominant action. Certain characteristics were conspicuous: the close, kinky African hair; the broad, low forehead; the wide, flat nostrils; but above all, the black, lusterless skin which had been so striking in the center of hundreds fresh, fair, and glowing.

Yet his had been the one great central figure; not as a curiosity, but par excellence, by virtue of strong body and active mind. She felt that if some calamity had occurred, some crisis arisen, he would have been the natural leader; the others would have followed; that his great shoulders would have towered over theirs, his deep, resonant voice have thundered out commands, and the giant frame with its long elbow-bent arms would have hurled men right and left in their execution.

As the night wore on Virginia's fatigue gave way to anger; she rebelled at this domination of her mind; this appropriation of her thoughts by a huge negro. Aside from the proper gratitude which she felt toward a rescuer, she resented this possession; it was not the first time that she had encountered men of this race; she had met them in Paris, in London, at diplomatic functions, 53