lled Beatrice Grimshaw and her
dilemma on a schooner in mid-Pacific, when the captain, a gentle ancient,
thinking that the dark women were having it all their own way, offered to
embrace Miss Grimshaw, finding in return a gun pointing at his middle,
filling him with quaint surprise that anyone could possibly offer violence
in defence of a soul in so delightful a climate.

"After which and a rum cocktail, I said: 'Lavina, did you see much of
M'sieur Somerset Maugham when he was here?'

"'It is the man who writes?' she inquired lazily.

"'It is,' I returned.

"'It is the _beau garcon-ta-ta, neneenha roa?_' she suggested.

"'Probably not,' I said; 'I suspect you are thinking, as usual, of Rupert
Brooke. M'sieur Maugham may be regarded as _beau_, but he is not an
elderly waiter of forty-seven, therefore we may not call him a _garcon_.'

"'It is,' Lavina admitted; 'that I am thinking of M'sieur Rupert, he is
the _beau garcon_.'

"'But,' I said, 'I want to know what you thought of M'sieur Somerset
Maugham?'

"Once started on Rupert Brooke, and Lavina would go on for the afternoon!

"'I respect M'sieur Morn,' said Lavina.

"'Oh!' thought I; 'if she respects him, then I'm not going to get much.'

"'His French is not mixed,' she continued, referring to Maugham's Parisian
accent; 'I speak much with him, and he listen, with but a small question
here, and one there. It is the pure French from Paris, as M'sieur _le
Governeur_ speak, who is the pig. But when he speak much, then it is like
the coral which breaks.'

"Lavina now wandered off permanently; it was impossible to bring her back.
Her image of the brittle coral branches was a mild personality directed at
Maugham's stutter, which seldom escapes the most sophisticated observer.
For those who interview him always find well cut suitings, clean collars
and the stutter, and very little else that they can lay hold of with any
degree of honesty. Which only goes to prove my own opinion that Maugham,
as an observer, refuses to have his own vision clogged by prying eyes at
himself.

"I expect that if my French had been better, I might have got some
information about Maugham in Tahiti from the bland and badly built French
officials who lurk in the official club near the Pomare Palace. I was
reduced, in my rather casual investigation, to questioning natives and
schooner captains. Once I felt confident of gaining a picture, I asked
Titi of Taunoa. (Titi is the lady who figure