fine, I could see no touch or tint of the Polynesian except in the slight harshness of the contours of her face, and that her legs were more like yellow satin than white.  Her foot would have given Du Maurier inspiration for a brown Trilby.  It was long, high-arched, perfect; the toes, never having known shoes, natural and capable of grasp, and the ankle delicate, yet strong.  Her father she believed to have been a French official who had stayed only a brief period in Bora-Bora, her mother’s island, and whose very name was forgotten by her.  She had not seen her mother since her first year, having, as is the custom here, been adopted by others.

Poia had a head like a cocoanut, her eyes shiny, black buttons, her body roly-poly, and her pinkish-yellow feet and hands adorable.  Evoa was dressing her for the market in a red muslin slip, a knitted shawl of white edged with blue, and, shades of Fahrenheit! a cap with pink ribbons, and socks of orange.  Evoa herself would wear a simple tunic, which was most of the time pulled down over the shoulder to give Poia ingress to her white breast.  Poia was like a flower, and I had never heard her cry, this good nature being accounted for perhaps by an absence of pins, as she was usually naked.  She had two teeth barely peeping from below.

Evoa spoke only Tahitian, which is the same tongue as that spoken in Bora-Bora, and she was totally without education.  Afa had found her, and brought her to his cabin in the garden.  He did not claim to be the father of Poia, but was delighted, as are all Polynesians, to find a mate and, with her, certainty of a little one.  They have not our selfishness of paternity, but find in the assumed relation of father all the pride and joy we take only with surety of our relationship.

Afa was a handsome half-caste, his mustache and light complexion, his insouciance and frivolity, his perfect physique, skill with canoe and fish-net and spear, his flirtations with many women, and his ability to provide amusement for the guests, making him a superior type of the white-brown blood.  There was a black tragedy in this life which, with all his heedlessness, often and again imprisoned him in deep melancholy.

His father was a wealthy Italian who lived near the home of a Tahitian princess, and who won the girl’s love against her father’s commands.  Afa was born, the princess was sent away, and the child brought up in a good family.  When he was fourteen years old he was taken to the United States.  His father became engaged in a quarrel with certain natives whom he forbade to cross his land to gather feis in the mountains.  As they had always had this right, they resented his imposition, and plotted to kill him.  He disappeared, and a long time afterward his body was found loosely covered with earth, the feet above the surface.  In court the surgeons swore that he had been alive when buried.  A number of men were tried for the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment in New Caledonia.