In other respects, considering the circumstances, their life was an easy one.  The natives brought them freely of their simple store—­yam, taro, bread-fruit, and cocoanut, with plenty of fish, crabs, and lobsters, as well as eggs by the basketful, and even sometimes chickens.  They required no pay beyond a nod and a smile, and went away happy at those slender recognitions.  Felix discovered, in fact, that they had got into a region where the arid generalizations of political economy do not apply; where Adam Smith is unread, and Mill neglected; where the medium of exchange is an unknown quantity, and where supply and demand readjust themselves continuously by simpler and more generous principles than the familiar European one of “the higgling of the market.”

The people, too, though utter savages, were not in their own way altogether unpleasing.  It was their customs and superstitions, rather than themselves, that were so cruel and horrible.  Personally, they seemed for the most part simple-minded and good natured creatures.  At first, indeed, Muriel was afraid to venture for a step beyond the precincts of their own huts; and it was long before she could make up her mind to go alone through the jungle paths with Mali, unaccompanied by Felix.  But by degrees she learned that she could walk by herself (of course, with the inevitable Shadow ever by her side) over the whole island, and meet everywhere with nothing from men, women, and children but the utmost respect and gracious courtesy.  The young lads, as she passed, would stand aside from the path, with downcast eyes, and let her go by with all the politeness of chivalrous English gentlemen.  The old men would raise their eyes, but cross their hands on their breasts, and stand motionless for a few minutes till she got almost out of sight.  The women would bring their pretty brown babies for the fair English lady to admire or to pat on the head; and when Muriel now and again stooped down to caress some fat little naked child, lolling in the dust outside the hut, with true tropical laziness, the mothers would run up at the sight with delight and joy, and throw themselves down in ecstacies of gratitude for the notice she had taken of their favored little ones.  “The gods of Heaven,” they would say, with every sign of pleasure, “have looked graciously upon our Unaloa.”

At first Felix and Muriel were mainly struck with the politeness and deference which the natives displayed toward them.  But after a time Felix at least began to observe, behind it all, that a certain amount of affection, and even of something like commiseration as well, seemed to be mingled with the respect and reverence showered upon them by their hosts.  The women, especially, were often evidently touched by Muriel’s innocence and beauty.  As she walked past their huts with her light, girlish tread, they would come forth shyly, bowing many times as they approached, and offer her a long spray of the flowering hibiscus, or a pretty garland of crimson ti-leaves, saying at the same time, many times over, in their own tongue, “Receive it, Korong; receive it, Queen of the Clouds!  You are good.  You are kind.  You are a daughter of the Sun.  We are glad you have come to us.”