rom a far-away beach. The pillars of
the house were hung with banana-leaves and ferns, but the atmosphere
was not vividly gay because of the high estate and age of Tetuanui
and his visitors.

The company arrived in automobiles, conspicuous among them Hinoe
Pomare, the big hobbledehoy son of Prince Hinoe, and, next to his
father, heir to the throne. With him was his sister, Tetuanui, who was
departing for Raratonga, and her husband. He was a brother of Cowan,
the prize-fighter, and in their honor was the luncheon. Introduced to
all by the chief of Mataiea, I was asked to sit with them. The group
was extraordinarily interesting, for besides the prince's heir and
his sister, Chief Tetuanui, and his brother-in-law Charlie Ling, was
Paraita, son of a German schooner captain, who was adopted by Pomare
V, and Tinau, another adopted son of the late king, who owned, and
ran for hire, a motor-car. There were other men, but among the women,
all of whom sat below the humblest man, myself, was the Princesse de
Joinville of Moorea, mother of Prince Hinoe, and grandmother of the
youth at the head of the table, and of the boy, Ariipae, who attended
to the chief's garden.

This grandmother, known as Vahinetua Roriarii, was one of the very
last survivors among the notable figures of the kingdom. She had a
cigarette in the corner of her sunken mouth, but she tossed it away
when she and Haamoura, the chief's wife, kissed each other on both
cheeks in the French way. The Princesse de Joinville was tottering,
but with something in her face, a disdain, a trace of power, that
attracted me before I knew her rank or history. Her once raven hair was
streaked with gray, she trembled, and her step was feeble; but all her
weaknesses and blemishes impressed me as the disfigurement by age and
abrasion of a beautiful and noble statue. She was more savage-looking
than any modern Tahitian woman, more aboriginal, and yet more subtle. I
once contemplated in the jungle of Johore an old tigress just trapped,
but marked and wounded by the pit and the blows of her captors. She
looked at me coolly, but with a glint in her eye that meant, I thought,
contempt for all that had occurred since her last hour of freedom.

In the curious network of lines all over the worn face of the princess
there were suggestions of the sensual lure that had made her the
mistress of the court; a gentle but pitiful droop to the mouth that I
had noticed persisting in the roues and si