Doffing her conventional dress, she doffed conventionality as well. She was transformed into something seductive and subtle—something in woman's flesh as ethereal as sea-foam and as vivid as flame.
She smiled suddenly. Then to a humming accompaniment she twirled upon her toes, her steps growing faster and faster until her figure was obscured in the blur of action and her hair flew about her face like the hair of a painted witch.
The words of the air she hummed came with a dash of bravado from between her lips:
| "—Ange ou diable, |
| Écume de la mer?" |
Still smiling, she sank in an exhausted heap upon the floor.
Then she went to bed and fell asleep, lamenting that her head rested upon a cotton pillow-slip.
CHAPTER II
In time long past, when the Huguenots were better known, if less esteemed, an impecunious gentleman of France left his native land for the sake of faith and fortune.
Lured by that blatant boast of liberty which swelled the throats of the Western colonies, even while their hands were employed in meting out the reward of witchcraft and in forging the chains of slavery, he directed his way towards American soil.
His mission failed, and, in search of theological freedom, he only succeeded in weaving matrimonial fetters. Amid an unassorted medley of creeds and customs he came upon the red-cheeked daughter of a Swiss adventurer—an ambitious pioneer who lived upon the theory that the New World having been created for the service of its foreign invaders, the might of the sword was the right of possession.