whites.

"And now," says I, "you belong round here, you're bound to understand
this. What am I tabooed for, anyway? Or, if I ain't tabooed, what makes
the folks afraid of me?"

She stood and looked at me with eyes like saucers.

"You no savvy?" she gasps at last.

"No," said I. "How would you expect me to? We don't have any such
craziness where I come from."

"Ese no tell you?" she asked again.

(_Ese_ was the name the natives had for Case; it may mean foreign, or
extraordinary; or it might mean a mummy apple; but most like it was only
his own name misheard and put in a Kanaka spelling.)

"Not much," said I.

"Damn Ese!" she cried.

You might think it funny to hear this Kanaka girl come out with a big
swear. No such thing. There was no swearing in her--no, nor anger; she
was beyond anger, and meant the word simple and serious. She stood there
straight as she said it. I cannot justly say that I ever saw a woman
look like that before or after, and it struck me mum. Then she made a
kind of an obeisance, but it was the proudest kind, and threw her hands
out open.

"I 'shamed," she said. "I think you savvy. Ese he tell me you savvy, he
tell me you no mind, tell me you love me too much. Taboo belong me," she
said, touching herself on the bosom, as she had done upon our
wedding-night. "Now I go 'way, taboo he go 'way too. Then you get too
much copra. You like more better, I think. _Tofa, alii_," says she in
the native--"Farewell, chief!"

"Hold on!" I cried. "Don't be in such a hurry."

She looked at me sidelong with a smile. "You see you get copra," she
said, the same as you might offer candies to a child.

"Uma," said I, "hear reason. I didn't know, and that's a fact; and Case
seems to have played it pretty mean upon the pair of us. But I do know
now, and I don't mind; I love you too much. You no go 'way, you no leave
me, I too much sorry."

"You no love me," she cried, "you talk me bad words!" And she threw
herself in a corner of the floor, and began to cry.

Well, I'm no scholar, but I wasn't born yesterday, and I thought the
worst of that trouble was over. However, there she lay--her back turned,
her face to the wall--and shook with sobbing like a little child, so
that her feet jumped with it. It's strange how it hits a man when he's
in love; for there's no use mincing things--Kanaka and all, I was in
love with her, or just as good. I tried to take her hand, but she would
none of that. "Uma," I said,