“He is a strange one, that man,” said Lovina.  “Two years ago I have nice girl here, wait on bar, look sweet, and I make her jus’ so my daughter.  I go America for visit, and when I come back that girl ruin’.  That American take her ’way, and he come tell me straight he couldn’t help it.  He jus’ love her—­mad.  He build her fine house, get automobile.  She never work.  Every day he come here get meals take home.”

That tall, straight chap, his hair prematurely gray, his face sad, had made the barmaid the jewel of a golden setting.  He devoted himself and his income solely to her.  Stranger still, he had made her his legal wife.

But she is an exception rare as rain in Aden.  These native girls of mixed blood, living tragedies sprung from the uncaring selfishness of the whites, struggle desperately to lift themselves above the mire in which the native is sinking.  They throw themselves away on worthless adventurers, who waste their little patrimony, break their hearts, and either desert them after the first flush of passion passes, or themselves sink into a life of lazy slovenliness worse than that of the native.

All these things I pondered when Mlle. N——­ spoke of her hope of finding happiness in Tahiti.  I was sure that, with her wealth, she would have many suitors,—­but what of a tender heart?

“It is love I want,” she said.  “Love and freedom.  We women are used to having our own way.  I know the nuns would be horrified, but I shall bind myself to no man.”

The last colors of the sunset faded slowly on the sea, and the world was a soft gray filled with the radiance of the rising moon.  I rose and when Mile.  N——­ had mounted I strolled ahead of her horse in the moonlight.  I was wearing a tuberose over my ear, and she remarked it.

“You know what that signifies?  If a man seeks a woman, he wears a white flower over his ear, and if his love grows ardent, he wears a red rose or hibiscus.  But if he tires, he puts some green thing in their place. Bon dieu! That is the depth of ignominy for the woman scorned.  I remember one girl who was made light of that way in church.  She stayed a day hidden in the hills weeping, and then she threw herself from a cliff.”

There was in her manner a melancholy and a longing.

“Tahitians wear flowers all the day,” I said.  “They are gay, and life is pleasant upon their island.  There are automobiles by the score, cinemas, singing, and dancing every evening, and many Europeans and Americans.  With money you could have everything.”

“It is not singing and dancing I desire!” she exclaimed. “Pas de tout! I must know more people, and not people like priests and these copra dealers.  I have read in novels of men who are like gods, who are bold and strong, but who make their women happy.  Do you know an officer of the Zelee, with hair like a ripe banana?  He is tall and plays the banjo.  I saw him one time long ago when the warship was here.  He was on the governor’s veranda.  Oh, that was long ago, but such a young man would be the man that I want.”