oomed in the distance, and the immense Pic du Francais
towered in shadow. Faintly I heard the boom of the waterfall, and
knew we were nearing the goal.

The canon grew yet narrower and darker, and the crash of water
louder. We had again attained a considerable height over the stream,
and the trail seemed lost. The princess took my hand, and cautiously
feeling the creepers and plants under our feet, we slipped and crept
down the hidden path. Suddenly, the light became brilliant, and I
found myself in a huge broken bowl of lava rock, the walls almost
vertical. From the summit of the precipice facing me fell a superb
cascade into a deep and troubled tarn. The stream was spun silver in
the sun, which now was warm and splendid. So far it fell that much of
it never reached the pool as water, but, blown by the gentle breeze,
a moiety in spume and spray wet the earth for an acre about. Like
the veil of a bride, the spindrift spread in argent clouds, and a
hundred yards away dropped like gentle rain upon us. Verdure covered
everything below except where the river ran from the tarn and hurried
to the lesser things of the town. The giant walls, as black as the
interior of an old furnace, were festooned with magnificent tree
ferns, the exquisite maidenhair, lianas, and golden-green mosses,
all sparkling in the sun with the million drops of the vaimato.

We withdrew a few paces from the vapor, and found a place on the edge
of the brook to have our fruit and, perhaps, a siesta. A carpet of
moss and green leaves made a couch of Petronian ease, and we threw
ourselves upon it with the weariness of six miles afoot uphill in
the tropics. It was not hot like the summer heat of New York, for
Tahiti has the most admirable climate I have found the world over,
but at midday I had felt the warmth penetratingly. Noanoa Tiare made
nothing of it, but suggested that we both leap into the tarn.

I knew a moment of squeamishness, echo of the immorality of my
catechism and my race conventions. I felt almost aghast at finding
myself alone with that magnificent creature in such a paradisiacal
spot. I wondered what thoughts might come to me. I had danced with her,
I had talked with her under the stars, but what might she expect me
not to do? And what was an Occidental, a city man, before her? She
retired behind a bird's-nest fern, on the long, lanceolate leaves
of which were the shells of the mountain snail. At her feet was the
bastard canna, the pung