AN OVATION
A more clever negro, one confidant, assured, cunning, diplomatic, would have been less impressive to the girl; a mulatto unimpressive altogether. Dessalines was typical. She believed him to be honest, earnest. She believed his ambitions for his country to be minor to those for his race, his personal ambitions least of all. His aspect of doubt affected her strongly; her sympathy went out to him in his struggle.
"Do you still wish to rule?" she asked in a low voice.
His slumberous eyes rested on her for a moment before he replied, then the great voice welled out like the growl of a lion.
"I shall rule, Miss Moultrie. I would not tell this to any but you. In a month's time I shall be regent of Hayti—then emperor!" The word boomed forth resonantly; the massive head was raised proudly.
Virginia, always as keenly alive to an impression as the film of a camera, was thrilled through and through. The words rang in her ears. "I shall be king," all that the words contained! King, Prophet, Educator, Wise Despot of a rich island teeming with a savage population. The great negro who stood before her, staring at the ocean beneath his lowering brows, would be this one. She caught her breath with a gasp and the color fled from her face as she looked at him. Virile, crude, uncouth, unable to cope mentally with a brain of multiplex convolutions, it was such a one who must lead his groping people out of the shadow. No white man ever could do it; no mulatto ever could do it; it was the work of a negro, and she believed that it was the work of the one who stood before her, and the thought filled
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