Most of all did this heart-broken soul, who had bid good-bye to all earthly happiness, love the weird prophecies of St. John the Evangelist. She loved to read of the Belovéd City, and the sights that he saw, to her become realities. She said she saw visions in the night as she looked up from dyin’ faces into the high heavens—she foretold events. Her prophetic sayin’s became almost as inspired revelations to them about her. She said she heard voices talkin’ to her out of the skies and the darkness, and I don’t know but she did—I don’t feel like disputin’ it either way; besides, I wuzn’t there. But as I wuz a sayin’, from what I wuz told, the little girl, Genieve, inheritin’ as she did her mother’s imaginative nature and her father’s bright mind and wit, and contemplatin’ her mother’s daily life of duty and self-sacrifice, and bein’ brought up as she wuz under the very eaves of the New Jerusalem her mother wuz always readin’ about, it is no wonder that she grew up like a posy—that while its roots are in the earth its tall flowers open and wave in the air of Eden. The other world, the land unseen but near, became more of a reality to her than this. “The voices” her mother said she heard was to her real and true as the voice of good Father Gasperin, who preached in the little chapel every month. The future of her mother’s race wuz to her plain and distinct, lit with light failin’ from the new heavens on the new earth that she felt awaited her people. The inspired prophecies to her pointed to their redemption and the upbuilding of a New Republic, where this warm-hearted, emotional, beauty-lovin’ race should come to their own, and, civilized and enlightened, become a great people, a nation truly brought out of great tribulations. She grew up unlike any other girl, more beautiful than any other—so said every one who saw her. A mind different from any other—impractical perhaps, but prophetic, impassioned, delicate, sorrowful, inspired. When she became old enough she followed her mother’s callin’ of nursin’ the sick, and it seemed indeed as if her slight hands held the gift of healin’ in them, so successful wuz she. Guarded by her mother as daintily as if she wuz the daughter of a queen, she grew up to womanhood as innocent as Eve wuz when the garden wuz new. She turned away almost in disgust from the attention of young men, white or colored. But about a year before I went to Belle Fanchon she had met her king. And to her, truly, Victor wuz a crowned monarch. And the love that sprung up in both their hearts the moment they looked in each other’s eyes wuz as high and pure and ideal an attachment as wuz ever felt by man or woman. Victor wuz the son of a white man and a colored woman, but he showed the trace of his mother’s ancestry as little as did Genieve.