At the risk of being thought extravagant in my statement I must say they appeared to me strikingly handsome, both in their faces and their lithe figures. I was told that each of those I saw was the mistress of some well-to-do merchant of the place and strictly true to her lover. The dance was not of a kind one would wish to take his sisters to see, but it was evident the negroes put a less libidinous interpretation upon it than the Caucasian visitors. It was one, however, where "a little goes a long way," and before twelve I was in my room at the hotel.
I had just lit the lamp when I was surprised to hear a knock at the door and opened it to find Miss May standing there, with an anxious expression on her face.
"Don't undress," she said, in a slightly shaking voice. "I have been full of all sorts of fears since you went away. I want you to sit up awhile and talk to me."
I accepted the amendment, as they say in deliberative bodies, with the greatest pleasure, for I would rather sit up with her than to sleep on the softest down ever made into a couch. She went to the window, which was innocent of glass, and threw open the wooden shutters.
"What did you hear to disturb you, a mouse?" I asked, jocularly.
"I don't know. The place is full of creepy sounds. The noise in the street continues and every step in the corridors makes the boards creak. Did you enjoy your dance?"
"Not specially," I said. And then I told her of the Métisse women I had seen, praising their appearance.
She did not seem to notice what I was saying. She acted as if in constant fear of something unpleasant.
"You do not care to talk as much as you thought you did," I remarked.
"No. I was tired and sleepy, but I did not like to be alone. Why can't I--there wouldn't be any harm, would there?--lie on this smaller bed just as I am, and you can get your sleep over yonder?"
Conflicting sentiments filled my brain as I listened. What a strange woman she was! Alarmed at the least approach on my part, when we were on a steamer deck, a veranda or in a carriage; and now proposing to drop to slumber in my very bedroom, as if it were nothing at all!
A dim suspicion that she meant more than she said forced itself upon me at first. Was I deceiving myself by paying too much attention to her protestations? Had she run away merely for the sake of being pursued?