f he
pleaded--"considered the position of the resident white in these
isles, far from the restraints and manifold affairs of his own world.
Life is apt to become very dreary, very monotonous for him. Ah,
yes, Matilda, you could scarce imagine, but it palls--it palls. He
requires--er--diversion, as it were, companionship, a personal share in
such charm and--er--sensuous appeal as flourish so richly on all sides
of him. Have you ever thought of the question in that light? You
haven't, of course, my dear. But consider the temptation."

He ended by retreating hastily behind his teacup, quite unnecessarily,
as it proved. Miss Matilda was in no condition just then to deploy the
expected maidenly emotions. "Consider!" Had she not? Had she been
thinking of anything else these past feverish weeks? What other exile
could have taught any secrets of monotony or dreariness to the daughter
of a lone missionary?

Chapel, school, home and chapel again, and in this round each daily move
foreseen and prescribed. An hour for getting up and an hour for lying
down; an hour for eating and an hour for praying; for turning a page and
for threading a needle. No escape from the small formal proprieties in
which her father had molded their lives. No friend, no neighbor, no
acquaintance except native pupils and servants. No stimulus except the
moral discourse of a reverend tyrant. No interests except the same petty
worries and the same money needs....

From where she sat in the veranda she could see no single object to
break the deadly sameness of it. There were the same sticks of
unsuitable furniture in the same immutable order, the same rugs at the
same angles; the same dishes, the same books, the same pictures on the
walls--"The Prodigal's Return," chromolithograph, in a South Pacific
isle! And all this not merely happening so, as it might very well happen
elsewhere. Here it was laboriously achieved, a triumph of formulated
rectitude, transplanted bodily for a reproof and an example to the heart
of the riotous tropics....

"Why did you say there was need to explain to me, father?" she managed
to ask at last.

But the pastor had had time to reform his lines.

"I spoke somewhat at large," he said, with a wave. "My specific purpose
was to define an attitude which perhaps you may have mistaken--to warn
you against undue intolerance, my dear. You see, as a matter of fact, I
had a talk to-day on this same head--quite a helpful talk--with Capta