ely, and putting about
me the pareu Lovaina had given me, I threw the light upon the two
beds to make my nightly choice. I surveyed them both critically,
but the one nearest to me having the netting arranged for entrance,
I selected it, and setting the lamp upon the dresser, extinguished
it, groped to the bed in darkness, and lay down upon the coverless
sheet. A few minutes I stayed awake going over the happenings of the
day, and fell asleep in joyful mood that I was in the island I had
sought so long in desire and dream. I knew nothing of my visitor,
for she had made no audible sound, and the shadows had hidden her.

At breakfast the next morning I was waited on by Atupu, the beauty. Her
face was tear-stained, and a deep weariness was upon her. She regarded
me with a glance of mixed anger and hurt.

"Vous etes fache avec moi?" she inquired accusingly.

"I angry with you?" I repeated. "Why what have I done to show it?"

And then she told me of her visit and vigil. Seeing me alone in
Tahiti, and kind-hearted, she said, she had thought to tell me of
the Tahitian heart and the old ways of the land. She had robed,
perfumed, and adorned herself, and entered my sleeping-place, as she
said was the wont of Tahitian girls. I had certainly heard her enter,
and seen her kneel to await my greeting, and if not then, I had seen
her plainly when I lifted the lamp, for the light had streamed full
upon her. She had remained there upon the floor half an hour until my
audible breathing had compelled her to believe against her will that I
was asleep. Then she had fled and wept the night in humiliation. Never
in her young life had such a horror afflicted her.

I was stunned, and could only reiterate that I had not known of her
presence, and with a trinket from my pocket I dried her tears.

Rupert Brooke in a letter to a friend in England drew a little etching
of our lodging:

I am in a hovel at the back of my hotel, and contemplate the yard. The
extraordinary life of the place flows round and near my room--for
here no one, man or woman, scruples to come through one's room
at any moment, if it happens to be a shortcut. By day nothing much
happens in the yard--except when a horse tried to eat a hen, the other
afternoon. But by night, after ten, it is filled with flitting figures
of girls, with wreaths of white flowers, keeping assignations.... It is
all--all Papeete--like a Renaissance Italy with the venom taken out,
No, simpler, ligh