in dressing-gowns, in pajamas, or in other undress came and went, under the interested gaze of idlers and drinkers, and they had often to endure intimate questions or badinage.  All were on a footing as to the arrangements, and I saw the haughty duchess of the Noa-Noa follow Lovaina’s American negro chauffeur, while a former ambassador waited on the chest.  There was no distinction of rank, since Tahiti, excepting for an occasional French official, was the purest democracy of manners in the world, a philosophy the whites had learned from the natives, who think all foreigners equally distinguished.

Those not of the South Seas, and unused to the primitive publicity of the natural functions there, suffered intensely at first from embarrassment, but in time forgot their squeamishness, and perhaps learned to carry on conversations with those who drank or chatted outside.

The Tahitian cook slept all day between meals on a chair, with his head hanging out a window.  He was ill often from a rush of blood to his head.  Lovaina had offered him a mat to lie on the floor, but he pleaded his habit.  All the refuse of the kitchen was thrown into the garden under this window, and with the horses, chickens, dogs, and cats it was first come, first served.

On the couch back of the table Lovaina sat for many hours every day.  Her great weight made her disinclined to walk, and from her cushions she ruled her domain, chaffing with those who dropped in for drinks, advising and joking, making cakes and salads, bargaining with the butcher and vegetable-dealer, despatching the food toward the tables, feeding many dogs, posting her accounts, receiving payments, and regulating the complex affairs of her menage.  She would shake a cocktail, make a gin-fizz or a Doctor Funk, chop ice or do any menial service, yet withal was your entertainer and your friend.  She had the striking, yet almost inexplicable, dignity of the Maori—­the facing of life serenely and without reserve or fear for the morrow.

Underneath the table dogs tumbled, or raced about the porch, barking and leaping on laps, cats scurried past, and a cloud of tobacco smoke filled the close air.  Lovaina, in one of her sixty bright gowns, a white chemise beneath, her feet bare, sat enthroned.  On the chest were the captain of a liner or a schooner, a tourist, a trader, a girl, an old native woman, or a beach-comber with money for the moment.  It was the carpet of state on which all took their places who would have a hearing before the throne or loaf in the audience-chamber.

In her low, delightfully broken English, in vivid French, or sibilant Tahitian, Lovaina issued her orders to the girls, shouted maledictions at the cook, or talked with all who came.  Through that porch flowed all the scandal of the South Seas—­tales of hurricanes and waterspouts, of shipwrecks, of accidents, of lucky deals in pearls or shells, of copra, of new fashions and old inhabitants, of liaisons of white