ncing yet how melancholy it is. It always
seems to be haunted, for the natives never live in the valley. There is
a tradition that once one of the white gods came down from heaven, and
built an altar, and sacrificed a Samoan girl--though no one ever knew
quite why: for there the tradition ends."

I felt again that there was a hidden meaning in her words; but Roscoe
remained perfectly still. It seemed to me that I was little by little
getting the threads of his story. That there was a native girl; that the
girl had died or been killed; that Roscoe was in some way--innocently
I dared hope--connected with it; and that Mrs. Falchion held the key to
the mystery, I was certain. That it was in her mind to use the mystery,
I was also certain. But for what end I could not tell. What had passed
between them in London the previous winter I did not know: but it seemed
evident that she had influenced him there as she did on the 'Fulvia',
had again lost her influence, and was now resenting the loss, out of
pique or anger, or because she really cared for him. It might be that
she cared.

She added after a moment: "Add man to nature, and it stops sulking:
which goes to show that fallen humanity is better than no company at
all."

She had an inherent strain of mockery, of playful satire, and she told
me once, when I knew her better, that her own suffering always set
her laughing at herself, even when it was greatest. It was this
characteristic which made her conversation very striking, it was so
sharply contrasted in its parts; a heartless kind of satire set against
the most serious and acute statements. One never knew when she would
turn her own or her interlocutor's gravity into mirth.

Now no one replied immediately to her remarks, and she continued: "If I
were an artist I should wish to paint that scene, given that the lights
were not so bright and that mill machinery not so sharply defined. There
is almost too much limelight, as it were; too much earnestness in the
thing. Either there should be some side-action of mirth to make it less
intense, or of tragedy to render it less photographic; and unless, Dr.
Marmion, you would consent to be solemn, which would indeed be droll;
or that The Padre there--how amusing they should call him that!--should
cease to be serious, which, being so very unusual, would be tragic, I
do not know how we are to tell the artist that he has missed a chance of
immortalising himself."

Roscoe said noth