ed her to come and take the house over from him. As for
himself he would gladly accept their kind invitation to remain at the
Mission as their guest till the schooner returned.

The shock of his friend's death had all but cured him of his passion,
and he felt sure now of his own strength.

*****

But day after day, and then week after week passed, and no word came
from Vehaga, till one evening as he leant over the railing of the
garden, looking out upon the gorgeous setting of the sun into the ocean,
Maturei came paddling across the smooth waters of the harbour, and,
drawing his canoe up on the beach, the boy approached the white man.

"See," he said, "Loise hath sent thee this."

He unrolled a packet of broad, dried palm leaves, and taking from it a
thick necklet of sweet-smelling _kurahini_ buds, placed it in Brice's
hand.

He knew its meaning--it was the gift of a woman to an accepted lover.

The perfume of the flowers brought back her face to him in a moment.
There was a brief struggle in his mind; and then home, friends, his
future prospects in the great outside world, went to the wall, and the
half-blood had won.

Slowly he raised the token and placed it over his head and round his
neck.

*****

In the morning she came. He held out his hand and drew her to him, and
looking down into her eyes, he kissed her. Her lips quivered a little,
and then the long lashes fell, and he felt her tremble.

"Loise," he said simply, "will you be my wife?"

She glanced up at him, fearfully.

"Would you marry me?"

His face crimsoned--"Yes, of course. You were his wife. I can't forget
that. And, besides, you said once that you loved me."

*****

They were very happy for five or six years down there in Rikitea. They
had one child born to them--a girl with a face as beautiful as her
mother's.

Then a strange and deadly epidemic, unknown to the people of Rikitea,
swept through the Paumotu Group, from Pitcairn Island to Marutea, and
in every village, on every palm-clad atoll, death stalked, and the brown
people sickened and shivered under their mat coverings, and died. And
from island to island, borne on the very breath of the trade-wind, the
terror passed, and left behind it empty, silent clusters of houses,
nestling under the cocoanuts; and many a whale-ship beating back to the
coast of South America, sailed close in to the shore and waited for the
canoes to come off with fruit and vegetables; but none came, for