in your country and in England or France. She pursues the man she
wants, as he does the woman. Your women pursue, too, but they do it
by cunning, by little lies, by coquetry, by displaying their persons,
by flattery, and by feeding you.

"The Tahitian woman makes the first advances in friendship openly,
if she chooses. She arranges time and place for amours as your women
do. She does not take from the Tahitian man or from the foreigner his
right to choose, but she chooses herself, too. I feel sure that often
an American woman would give hours of pain to know well a certain
man, but makes no honest effort to draw him toward her. They have
told me so!"

I got up, and standing beside her, I quoted:

"Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing;
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and silence."

"Mais, c'est vrai!" she said, musingly. "The Tahitian woman will not
endure that. She is on a par with the man in seeking. Without fear
and without shame, and, attendez, Maru, without any more monogamy
than you men. I have told some of those suffrage ladies of London
and of Washington that we are in advance of their most determined
feminism. They will come to it. More women than men in Europe will
bring it there."

Her long, black lashes touched her cheeks.

"We are a little sleepy, n'est-ce pas?" she asked. "B'en, we will
have a taoto."

She made herself a pillow of leaves with her pareu, and arranging her
hair in two braids, she stretched herself out, with her face toward
the sky, and a cool banana-leaf laid over it. I copied her action,
and lulled by the falling water, the rippling of the pool, and the
drowsy rustling of the trees, I fell fast asleep, and dreamed of Eve
and the lotus-eaters.

When I awoke, the princess was refreshing her face and hands in
the water.

"A hio! Look!" she said eagerly. "O tane and O vahine!"

In the mist above the pool at the foot of the cascade a double rainbow
gleamed brilliantly. O tane is the man, which the Tahitians call the
real arch, and O vahine, the woman, the reflected bow. They appeared
and disappeared with the movement of the tiny, fleecy clouds about
the sun. The air, as dewy as early morn in the braes o' Maxwelton,
was deliciously cool.

"If you have courage and strength left," the princess said excitedly,
"we will go to the fort of