IN THE SHADOW
negro porter was impressed and respectful, an unusual quality in the attitude of a negro menial toward a negro gentleman.
Arrived in Boston he went at once to the most fashionable hotel, where he was accommodated without question. Other guests may or may not have protested his presence; if so the matter was not brought to his notice. Jules spread the report that he was a Haytian nobleman of vast wealth who had been recently entertained by British sovereignty; one or two papers paragraphed him. His picture and a biography which touched the truth in some places appeared in a Sunday newspaper supplement.
On arriving, he had written immediately to Virginia, requesting the privilege of calling upon her. Jules had examined the time-table and discovered that his master could go out on a noon train, returning in the evening. He had arrived in Boston on a Friday, and, while waiting for a reply to his note, he visited Harvard University, where he presented certain Oxford credentials and was received with the utmost cordiality.
Dessalines could not have explained to himself his desire to see Virginia. Perhaps he was a trifle overawed at the magnitude of his plans and wished a confidante; some one to give him a word of encouragement, a word of belief. It was the need of a dog for his master's presence when in strange surroundings, the need of a primitive nature for the guidance of a higher mentality. He knew Virginia to be sympathetic; he had felt the influence of her highly developed mentality upon his elemental one just as he had felt the influence of his own superabundant materialism upon her more spiritual na-
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