n old woman was sitting on her haunches
smoking a pipe. Then I saw Ata. She was suckling a new-born
child, and another child, stark naked, was playing at her feet.
When she saw me she called out to Strickland, and he
came to the door. He, too, wore nothing but a <i pareo>.
He was an extraordinary figure, with his red beard and matted
hair, and his great hairy chest. His feet were horny and
scarred, so that I knew he went always bare foot. He had gone
native with a vengeance. He seemed pleased to see me, and
told Ata to kill a chicken for our dinner. He took me into
the house to show me the picture he was at work on when I came in.
In one corner of the room was the bed, and in the middle
was an easel with the canvas upon it. Because I was sorry for
him, I had bought a couple of his pictures for small sums, and
I had sent others to friends of mine in France. And though I
had bought them out of compassion, after living with them I
began to like them. Indeed, I found a strange beauty in them.
Everyone thought I was mad, but it turns out that I was right.
I was his first admirer in the islands."

He smiled maliciously at Tiare, and with lamentations she told
us again the story of how at the sale of Strickland's effects
she had neglected the pictures, but bought an American stove
for twenty-seven francs.

"Have you the pictures still?" I asked.

"Yes; I am keeping them till my daughter is of marriageable
age, and then I shall sell them. They will be her <i dot>."
Then he went on with the account of his visit to Strickland.

"I shall never forget the evening I spent with him. I had not
intended to stay more than an hour, but he insisted that I
should spend the night. I hesitated, for I confess I did not
much like the look of the mats on which he proposed that I
should sleep; but I shrugged my shoulders. When I was
building my house in the Paumotus I had slept out for weeks on
a harder bed than that, with nothing to shelter me but wild
shrubs; and as for vermin, my tough skin should be proof
against their malice.

"We went down to the stream to bathe while Ata was preparing
the dinner, and after we had eaten it we sat on the verandah.
We smoked and chatted. The young man had a concertina, and he
played the tunes popular on the music-halls a dozen years
before. They sounded strangely in the tropical night
thousands of miles from civilisation. I asked Strickland if
it did not irk him to live in that pro