THE CRICKET MATCH
was constitutional, rather than social; it had slight reference to the former state of slavery or any other conditions governed by circumstance and politics; it was an inborn, instinctive aversion; the presence of a negro out of his place, close to him, in bodily contact, filled him with the same savage antipathy inspired in some people by the presence of certain lower animals. To some extent this sentiment obtained among his Carolina colleagues, but in Manning it was abnormally extreme; he would not permit the ministrations of a negro barber or man servant; had overcome with difficulty his repugnance to negro house servants. It was an inconvenient weakness, no doubt hereditary., His mother had suffered from it; Virginia shared it, but, not having been in Carolina since her seventh year, had never developed it to the same extent.
In a wave of repulsion which caught her breath and sucked the blood back into her heart Virginia turned and looked into the face of Dessalines who was standing at her shoulder. There was no change in the sable face; it might just have arisen from the river, and she could in fancy see the beads of water sparkling on the kinky hair, as a Scotch mist clings to a woolen texture; the grotesque, flat nostrils, the thick lips, the swift flash of the white teeth as he smiled, the muddy white of his odd bulging eyes, and the black, satiny skin, thin and clear and fine as the film which skims a cup of cocoa; all vivid, yet no more vivid than it had been when thrown in high light against the void of her imagination.
She tried to speak, to express her congratulations on the victory of the hour, but her quick breathing impeded the flow of words; Dessalines, seeing her emotion, spoke,
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