Doubtless, in the dozen years the gentle Lovaina ministered to the needs of travelers and residents, many girls came and went in her house.  Some have married, and some have gone away without a ring, but all have been made much of by those they served, and have lived gayly and by the way.

Lovaina, herself, said to me: 

“You know those girl’, they go ruin.  That girl you see here few minutes ago I bring her up just like Christian; be good, be true, do her prayers, make her soul all right.  Then I go San Francisco.  What you think?  When I come back she ruin.  ’Most break my heart.  That man he come to me, he say:  ’Lovaina, I take good care that girl.  I love her.’  That girl with him now.  She happy, got plenty dress, plenty best to eat, and nice buggy.  I tell you, I give up trying save those girl’.  I think they like ruin best.  I turn my back—­they ruin.”

Iromea was the sturdy veteran of the corps.  Tall, handsome, straight, mother of four children, obliging, wise in the way of the white, herself all native.

“And the babies?” I inquired.

“They all scatter.  Some in country; some different place,” answered Iromea, who ran from English to French to Tahitian, but of course not with the ease of Lovaina, for that great heart knew many of the cities of her father’s land, was educated in needlework style, and with a little dab of Yankee culture, now fast disappearing as she grew older.  One marked that tendency to reversion to the native type and ways among many islanders who had been superficially coated with civilization, but whom environment and heredity claim inexorably.

Iromea was thirty years old.  She had been loved by many white men, men of distinction here; sea-rovers, merchants, and lotus-eaters, writers, painters, and wastrels.

Juillet, whose native name was Tiurai, helped old Madame Rose to care for the rooms at the Tiare.  She was thirteen years old, willowy, with a beautiful, smiling face, and two long, black plaits.  Though innocent, almost artless, in appearance, she was an arch coquette, and flirted with old and young.  One day a turkey that shared the back yard with two automobiles, a horse, three carriages, several dogs, ten cats, and forty chickens, disappeared.  Juillet was sent to find the turkey.  She was gone four days, and came back with a brilliant new gown.  She brought with her the turkey, which she said she had been trying to drive back all the four days.

Juillet was named for the month of July.  Her mother was the cook of a governor when she was born on the fourteenth of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastile, and the governor named her for the month.  She was also named Nohorae, and noho means to be naked and rae forehead.  Juillet had a high forehead.

Lovaina pointed out to me the man who had taken away her favorite helper.  He was about forty years old, tall, angular, sharp-nosed, with gold eyeglasses.  I would have expected to meet him in the vestry of a church or to have been asked by him at a mission if I were saved, but in Tahiti he had gone the way of all flesh.  His voice had the timbre of the preacher.  He had come to the hotel in an expensive, new automobile to fetch cooked food for himself and Ruine.