and the fei, the yam and the taro. And clothes! The fools taught us
that the pareu, which left the body exposed to the air, clean and
refreshed by the sun and the winds, was immodest. We exchanged it for
undershirts and trousers and dresses and shoes and stockings and coats,
and got disease and death and degeneration.

"You are late, my friend," the princess went on, with a note of pity
in her soft voice. "My mother remembered the days Loti depicted in
'Rarahu.' My grandmother knew little Tarahu of Bora-Bora of whom he
wrote. Viaud was then a midshipman. We did not call him Loti, but Roti,
our coined word for a rose, because he had rosy cheeks. But he could
not call himself Roti in his novel, for in French, his language, that
meant roasted, and one might think of boeuf a la roti. We have no L
in Tahitian. We also called him Mata Reva or the Deep-Eyed One. Tarahu
was not born on Bora-Bora, but right here in Mataiea."

She lay at full length, her uptilted face in her hands, and her
perfect feet raised now and then in unaware accentuation of her words.

"What Tahitian women there were then! Read the old French writers! None
was a pigmy. When they stood under the waterfall the water ran off
their skins as off a marble table. Not a drop stayed on. They were
as smooth as glass."

Fragrance of the Jasmine sighed.

"Aue! Helas!"

I had it in my mouth to say that she was as beautiful and as
smooth-skinned as any of her forebears. She was as enticing as
imaginable, her languorous eyes alight as she spoke, and her bare
limbs moving in the vigor of her thoughts. But I could not think of
anything in French or English not banal, and my Tahitian was yet too
limited to permit me to tutoyer her. She was an islander, but she
had seen the Midnight Follies and the Bal Bullier, the carnival in
Nice, and once, New Year's Eve in San Francisco. An Italian and a
Scandinavian prince had wooed her.

I spoke of Loti again, and of other writers' comments upon the attitude
of women in Tahiti toward man.

The princess sat up and adjusted her hei of ferns. She studied a
minute, and then she said:

"I have long wanted to talk with an intelligent American on that
subject; with some one who knew Europe and his own country and these
islands. There is a vast hypocrisy in the writing and the talking about
it. Now, Maru (I already had been given my native name), the woman
of Tahiti exercises the same sexual freedom as the average white man
does