I knew a moment of squeamishness, echo of the immorality of my catechism and my race conventions.  I felt almost aghast at finding myself alone with that magnificent creature in such a paradisiacal spot.  I wondered what thoughts might come to me.  I had danced with her, I had talked with her under the stars, but what might she expect me not to do?  And what was an Occidental, a city man, before her?  She retired behind a bird’s-nest fern, on the long, lanceolate leaves of which were the shells of the mountain snail.  At her feet was the bastard canna, the pungent root of which makes Chinese curry.

When she emerged, she was an amazing and enchanting personage.  She had removed her gown, and wore a pareu of muslin, with huge scarlet leaves upon white.  She was tall and voluptuously formed, but she had made the loin-cloth, two yards long and a yard wide, cover her in a manner that was modest, though revealing.  It was the art of her ancestors, for this was the shape of their common garment of tapa, a native cloth.  With a knot or two she arranged the pareu so that it was like a chemise, coming to a foot above her knees and covering her bosom.

Her black, glossy hair was loose and hung below her waist, and upon it she had placed a wreath she had quickly made of small ferns.  That was their general custom, to adorn themselves when happy and at the bath.  The eyes of Fragrance of the Jasmine were very large, deep brown, her skin a coppery-cinnamon, with a touch of red in the cheeks, and her nose and mouth were large and well formed.  Her teeth were as the meat of the cocoanut, brilliant and strong.  Her limbs were rounded, soft, the flesh glowing with health and power.  She was of that line of Tahitian women who sent back the first European navigators, the English, to rave about an island of Junos, the French to call Tahiti La Nouvelle Cythere, the new isle of Venus.

I had but to tie up my own pareu of red calico with white leaves in the manner Lovaina had shown me to have an imitation of our usual swimming-trunks.

“Allons!” cried the princess, and running toward the waterfall, she climbed up the cliff to a height of a dozen feet, and threw herself, wreathed as she was, with a loud “Aue!” into the pool.

I followed her, and she dived and swam, brought up bottom, treaded water, and led me in a dozen exercises and tricks of the expert swimmer.  The water was very cool, and ten minutes in it, with our sharpening hunger, were enough delight.  Fragrance of the Jasmine, as she came dripping from water and lingered a few moments on the brink, was a rapturous object.  With unconscious grace she flung back her head many times to shake the moisture from her thick hair, and ran her fingers through it until the strands were fairly separated.  The pareu disclosed the rounded contour of her figure as if it were painted upon her.  She was one of those ancient Greek statues, those semi-nudes on which the artists painted in vivid tints the blush of youth, the hue of hair, and a shadow of a garment.  She entranced me, and I called out to her, “Nehenehe!” “Beautiful!”