She threw her arms about me, sprang close up, and pressed her face to mine in the island way of kissing, so that I was all wetted with her tears, and my heart went out to her wholly.  I never had anything so near me as this little brown bit of a girl.  Many things went together, and all helped to turn my head.  She was pretty enough to eat; it seemed she was my only friend in that queer place; I was ashamed that I had spoken rough to her:  and she was a woman, and my wife, and a kind of a baby besides that I was sorry for; and the salt of her tears was in my mouth.  And I forgot Case and the natives; and I forgot that I knew nothing of the story, or only remembered it to banish the remembrance; and I forgot that I was to get no copra, and so could make no livelihood; and I forgot my employers, and the strange kind of service I was doing them, when I preferred my fancy to their business; and I forgot even that Uma was no true wife of mine, but just a maid beguiled, and that in a pretty shabby style.  But that is to look too far on.  I will come to that part of it next.

It was late before we thought of getting dinner.  The stove was out, and gone stone-cold; but we fired up after a while, and cooked each a dish, helping and hindering each other, and making a play of it like children.  I was so greedy of her nearness that I sat down to dinner with my lass upon my knee, made sure of her with one hand, and ate with the other.  Ay, and more than that.  She was the worst cook I suppose God made; the things she set her hand to it would have sickened an honest horse to eat of; yet I made my meal that day on Uma’s cookery, and can never call to mind to have been better pleased.

I didn’t pretend to myself, and I didn’t pretend to her.  I saw I was clean gone; and if she was to make a fool of me, she must.  And I suppose it was this that set her talking, for now she made sure that we were friends.  A lot she told me, sitting in my lap and eating my dish, as I ate hers, from foolery — a lot about herself and her mother and Case, all which would be very tedious, and fill sheets if I set it down in Beach de Mar, but which I must give a hint of in plain English, and one thing about myself which had a very big effect on my concerns, as you are soon to hear.

It seems she was born in one of the Line Islands; had been only two or three years in these parts, where she had come with a white man, who was married to her mother and then died; and only the one year in Falesa.  Before that they had been a good deal on the move, trekking about after the white man, who was one of those rolling stones that keep going round after a soft job.  They talk about looking for gold at the end of a rainbow; but if a man wants an employment that’ll last him till he dies, let him start out on the soft-job hunt.  There’s meat and drink in it too, and beer and skittles, for you never hear of them starving, and rarely see them sober; and as for steady sport, cock-fighting isn’t