“Is it to this child of Nature that you object?  I call her distinctly attractive, though perhaps she does wear her hibiscus blooms with a difference to our women—­a little lower down.”

“The devil is always attractive,” replied Bastin gloomily.  “Child of Nature indeed!  I call her Child of Sin.  That photograph is enough to make my poor Sarah turn in her grave.”

“Why?” asked Bickley; “seeing that wide seas roll between you and this dusky Venus.  Also I thought that according to your Hebrew legend sin came in with bark garments.”

“You should search the Scriptures, Bickley,” I broke in, “and cultivate accuracy.  It was fig-leaves that symbolised its arrival.  The garments, which I think were of skin, developed later.”

“Perhaps,” went on Bickley, who had turned the page, “she” (he referred to the late Mrs. Bastin) “would have preferred her thus,” and he held up another illustration of the same woman.

In this the native belle appeared after conversion, clad in broken-down stays—­I suppose they were stays—­out of which she seemed to bulge and flow in every direction, a dirty white dress several sizes too small, a kind of Salvation Army bonnet without a crown and a prayer-book which she held pressed to her middle; the general effect being hideous, and in some curious way, improper.

“Certainly,” said Bastin, “though I admit her clothes do not seem to fit and she has not buttoned them up as she ought.  But it is not of the pictures so much as of the letterpress with its false and scandalous accusations, that I complain.”

“Why do you complain?” asked Bickley.  “Probably it is quite true, though that we could never ascertain without visiting the lady’s home.”

“If I could afford it,” exclaimed Bastin with rising anger, “I should like to go there and expose this vile traducer of my cloth.”

“So should I,” answered Bickley, “and expose these introducers of consumption, measles and other European diseases, to say nothing of gin, among an innocent and Arcadian people.”

“How can you call them innocent, Bickley, when they murder and eat missionaries?”

“I dare say we should all eat a missionary, Bastin, if we were hungry enough,” was the answer, after which something occurred to change the conversation.

But I kept the book and read it as a neutral observer, and came to the conclusion that these South Sea Islands, a land where it was always afternoon, must be a charming place, in which perhaps the stars of the Tropics and the scent of the flowers might enable one to forget a little, or at least take the edge off memory.  Why should I not visit them and escape another long and dreary English winter?  No, I could not do so alone.  If Bastin and Bickley were there, their eternal arguments might amuse me.  Well, why should they not come also?  When one has money things can always be arranged.

The idea, which had its root in this absurd conversation, took a curious hold on me.  I thought of it all the evening, being alone, and that night it re-arose in my dreams.  I dreamed that my lost Natalie appeared to me and showed me a picture.  It was of a long, low land, a curving shore of which the ends were out of the picture, whereon grew tall palms, and where great combers broke upon gleaming sand.