t the majesty of sex. The Indian, she understood, was an exception.
From all accounts, he knew how to treat his woman.

She was homesick. Her heart leaped with joy when she discovered in
Percival what she believed to be a domineering, masterful man. He had
been neither servile, nor polite, nor afraid. He had treated her,--at
least for an illuminating, transcendent ten minutes,--as if she were
the dirt under his feet,--and he was an American at that. True, he had
apologized a little later on, and had blushed quite becomingly in doing
so, but nothing,--nothing in the world,--would ever make her believe
that he was not the sort of man who could be depended upon to put a
woman in her place and keep her there. He might apologize until he was
black in the face and still be unable to take back the words he had
uttered. Notwithstanding that he, in his apology, professed to have
mistaken her in the darkness for one of the Portuguese immigrant women
who didn't understand a word of English, she forgave him quite humbly,
and that was going pretty far for Olga Obosky, whose identity ought not
to have been a matter of doubt, even on the darkest of nights.

She was a lithe, perfectly formed young woman, beautiful in an unusual
way. Her body was as sinuous as that of a woodland nymph. Indeed, in
one of her most spectacular dances, she appeared as a nymph, barefooted,
bare-legged, and,--as Mrs. Spofford caustically remarked,--bare-faced.
She possessed the marvellously clear, colourless complexion found only
among the purely Slavic women. Her lips were red and sensuous, her eyes
darkly mysterious and brooding, her hair as black as the raven's wing.

When she smiled her face became strikingly alive, radiant, transforming
her into a jolly, good-natured, wholesome girl in whom not the faintest
trace of the carnal was left. Every move, every thought, every impulse
was feminine; her imagination was feminine; she cast the spell of her
femininity over all with whom she came in contact. Primitively sensuous,
she was also primitively wary,--and so she was ineffably feminine.

Prior to the time of her dramatic encounter with the American, she had
favoured him with no more than a glance or two of curiosity. He was a
stowaway; for a brief while he was suspected of being involved in the
plot to blow up the ship. That was enough for her. Twice she had seen
Miss Clinton talking with him, and once, just before the storm set in,
she had paused to watch