Catholic Church?"

"Aye," the old trader assented. "Now, there's Loise, there--a clever,
intelligent, well-educated girl, and as far as money or trade goes,
as honest as the day. Can I, an old white-headed fool of sixty, go to
Australia and ask any _good_ woman to marry me, and come and live down
here? No."

He smoked in silence awhile, and then resumed.

"Yes; honest and trustworthy she is, I believe; although the white
blood in her veins is no recommendation. If ever you should live in the
islands, my lad--which isn't likely--take an old fool's advice and never
marry a half-caste, either in native fashion or in a church with a brass
band and a bishop as leading features of the show."

*****

Loise came to them. "Will you take coffee, Tamu?" she asked, standing
before them with folded hands.

The trader bent his head, and as the girl with noiseless step glided
gracefully away again he watched her.

"I think I will marry her, Brice. Sometimes when the old Marist priest
comes here he makes me feel d----d uncomfortable. Of course he is too
much of a gentleman--although he is a sky-pilot--to say all he would
like to say, but every time he bids me good-bye he says--cunning old
chap--'And think, M. Baldwin, her father, bad as he was, was a _white
man!_"

The young man listened in silence.

"I don't think I will ever go back to civilisation again, my lad--I am
no use there. Here I am somebody--there I am nobody; so I think I'll
give the old Father a bit of a surprise soon." Then with his merry,
chuckling laugh--"and you'll be my best man. You see, it won't make any
difference to you. Nearly all that I have, when I peg out, will go to
you--the son of my old friend and shipmate."

A curious feeling shot through Brice's heart as he murmured his thanks.
The recital of the girl's history made him burn with hot anger against
her. He had thought her so innocent. And yet the old trader's words,
"I've almost made up my mind to marry her," seemed to dash to the ground
some vague hope, he knew not what.

*****

That night he lay on a soft mat on Baldwin's verandah and tried to
sleep. But from between the grey-reds of the serried line of palms that
encompassed the house on all but the seaward side, a pale face with
star-like eyes and ruby lips looked out and smiled upon him; in the
distant and ever varying cadences of the breaking surf he heard the
sweet melody of her voice; in the dazzling brilliancy of the starry
heave