-Rui--here is the hour
for putter and tiro (cheese and syrup)." I did not sleep that night,
thinking continually of you, my very dear friend, until the morning;
being then still awake, I went to see Tapina Tutu on her bed, and
alas, she was not there. Afterwards I looked into your rooms; they did
not please me as they used to do. I did not hear your voice saying,
"Hail, Rui"; I thought then that you had gone, and that you had left
me. Rising up, I went to the beach to see your ship, and I could not
see it. I wept, then, until the night, telling myself continually,
"Teriitera returns into his own country and leaves his dear Rui
in grief, so that I suffer for him, and weep for him." I will not
forget you in my memory. Here is the thought: I desire to meet you
again. It is my dear Teriitera makes the only riches I desire in
this world. It is your eyes that I desire to see again. It must be
that your body and my body shall eat together at one table: there is
what would make my heart content. But now we are separated. May God
be with you all. May His word and His mercy go with you, so that you
may be well and we also, according to the words of Paul.

The chief listened throughout the message with his eyes empty of us,
conjuring a vision of the Rui who so far back had won his heart;
and when Choti had concluded, Ori-a-Ori lifted his glass, and said,
"Rui e Maru!" coupling me in his affection with the dim figure of
his sweet guest of the late eighties.

The last toast was to my return.

"You have eaten the fei in Tahiti nei, and you will come back,"
they chanted.

Raiere drove me in his cart to Taravao, where I had arranged for
an automobile to meet me. At Mataiea I was clasped to the bosom of
Haamoura, and spent a few minutes with the Chevalier Tetuanui. They
could not understand us cold-blooded whites, who go long distances
from loved ones. My contemplated journey to the Marquesas Islands
was to them a foolish and dangerous labor for no good reason.

The trip to Papeete from Mataiea by motor-car took only an hour and
a half, and I was in another world, on the camphorwood chest at the
Tiare hotel, by five o'clock.

"Mais, Brien, you long time go district!" exclaimed Lovaina. "What
you do so long no see you? I think may be you love one country vahine!"

She rubbed my back, and said that Lying Bill, who had been at the
Tiare for luncheon, hoped to sail in two days. McHenry was to go
with us as a passenger on the schoon