y, fetching heiress, born of a French father and a savage
mother, had all the airs and graces of a ballroom belle. Where had
she gained these fashions and desires of the women of cities, of
Europe?

I had but to look over the church to feel her loneliness. Teata,
Many Daughters, Weaver of Mats, and Flower, savagely handsome,
gaudily dressed, were the only companions of her own age. Flower, of
the red-gold hair, was striking in a scarlet gown of sateen, a
wreath of pink peppers, and a necklace of brass. She had been
ornamented by the oarsmen of the _Jeanne d'Arc_, fortunately without
Pere Victorien's knowledge. Teata, in her tight gown with its
insertions of fishnet revealing her smooth, tawny skin, a red scarf
about her waist, straw hat trimmed with a bright blue Chinese shawl
perched on her high-piled hair, was still a picture of primitive and
savage grace. They were handsome, these girls, but they were wild
flowers. Mlle. N---- had the poise and delicacy of the hothouse
blossom.

Her father had spent thirty years on Hiva-oa, laboring to wring a
fortune from the toil of the natives, and dying, he had left it all
to this daughter, who, with her laces and jewels, her elegant, slim
form and haughty manner, was in this wild abode of barefooted,
half-naked people like a pearl in a gutter. She was free now to do
what she liked with herself and her fortune. What would she do?

It was the question on every tongue and in every eye when, after mass,
she passed down the lane respectfully widened for her in the throng
on the steps and with a black-garbed sister at her side, walked to
the nuns' house.

"If only she had a religious vocation," sighed Sister Serapoline.
"That would solve all difficulties, and save her soul and happiness."

Vainly the nuns and priests had tried during the dozen years of her
tutelage in their hands to direct her aspirations toward this goal,
but one had only to look into her burning eyes or see the supple
movement of her body, to know that she sought her joy on earth.

Liha-Liha, the natives called her father, which means corporal, and
that they had hated and yet feared him when Hiva-oa was still given
over to cannibalism outlined his character. He had lived and died in
his house near the Stinking Springs on the road to Taaoa. The sole
white man in that valley, he had lorded it over the natives more
sternly than had their old chiefs. He had fought down the wilderness,
planted great cocoanut-plan