ddressed herself to me
reflectively.

"My first husband, Captain Johnson, used to thrash me
regularly. He was a man. He was handsome, six foot three,
and when he was drunk there was no holding him. I would be
black and blue all over for days at a time. Oh, I cried when
he died. I thought I should never get over it. But it wasn't
till I married George Rainey that I knew what I'd lost.
You can never tell what a man is like till you live with him.
I've never been so deceived in a man as I was in George
Rainey. He was a fine, upstanding fellow too. He was nearly
as tall as Captain Johnson, and he looked strong enough. But
it was all on the surface. He never drank. He never raised
his hand to me. He might have been a missionary. I made love
with the officers of every ship that touched the island, and
George Rainey never saw anything. At last I was disgusted
with him, and I got a divorce. What was the good of a husband
like that? It's a terrible thing the way some men treat women."

I condoled with Tiare, and remarked feelingly that men were
deceivers ever, then asked her to go on with her story of Strickland.

"'Well,' I said to him, 'there's no hurry about it. Take your
time and think it over. Ata has a very nice room in the
annexe. Live with her for a month, and see how you like her.
You can have your meals here. And at the end of a month, if
you decide you want to marry her, you can just go and settle
down on her property.'

"Well, he agreed to that. Ata continued to do the housework, and
I gave him his meals as I said I would. I taught Ata to make one
or two dishes I knew he was fond of. He did not paint much. He
wandered about the hills and bathed in the stream. And he sat
about the front looking at the lagoon, and at sunset he would go
down and look at Murea. He used to go fishing on the reef. He
loved to moon about the harbour talking to the natives. He was a
nice, quiet fellow. And every evening after dinner he would go
down to the annexe with Ata. I saw he was longing to get away to
the bush, and at the end of the month I asked him what he
intended to do. He said if Ata was willing to go, he was willing
to go with her. So I gave them a wedding dinner. I cooked it with
my own hands. I gave them a pea soup and lobster <i a la portugaise,>
and a curry, and a cocoa-nut salad -- you've never had one of my
cocoa-nut salads, have you? I must make you one before you go --
and then I made them an i