er the interested gaze of idlers and drinkers, and they had often
to endure intimate questions or badinage. All were on a footing as
to the arrangements, and I saw the haughty duchess of the Noa-Noa
follow Lovaina's American negro chauffeur, while a former ambassador
waited on the chest. There was no distinction of rank, since Tahiti,
excepting for an occasional French official, was the purest democracy
of manners in the world, a philosophy the whites had learned from
the natives, who think all foreigners equally distinguished.

Those not of the South Seas, and unused to the primitive publicity
of the natural functions there, suffered intensely at first from
embarrassment, but in time forgot their squeamishness, and perhaps
learned to carry on conversations with those who drank or chatted
outside.

The Tahitian cook slept all day between meals on a chair, with his
head hanging out a window. He was ill often from a rush of blood
to his head. Lovaina had offered him a mat to lie on the floor, but
he pleaded his habit. All the refuse of the kitchen was thrown into
the garden under this window, and with the horses, chickens, dogs,
and cats it was first come, first served.

On the couch back of the table Lovaina sat for many hours every
day. Her great weight made her disinclined to walk, and from her
cushions she ruled her domain, chaffing with those who dropped in
for drinks, advising and joking, making cakes and salads, bargaining
with the butcher and vegetable-dealer, despatching the food toward the
tables, feeding many dogs, posting her accounts, receiving payments,
and regulating the complex affairs of her menage. She would shake a
cocktail, make a gin-fizz or a Doctor Funk, chop ice or do any menial
service, yet withal was your entertainer and your friend. She had the
striking, yet almost inexplicable, dignity of the Maori--the facing
of life serenely and without reserve or fear for the morrow.

Underneath the table dogs tumbled, or raced about the porch, barking
and leaping on laps, cats scurried past, and a cloud of tobacco smoke
filled the close air. Lovaina, in one of her sixty bright gowns,
a white chemise beneath, her feet bare, sat enthroned. On the chest
were the captain of a liner or a schooner, a tourist, a trader, a girl,
an old native woman, or a beach-comber with money for the moment. It
was the carpet of state on which all took their places who would have
a hearing before the throne or loaf in the aud