ve gone to the
palace. But I would never have come back to the house of Mouth of God.
That was the beginning of our love. He would yield me to nobody. He
told the governor that I would not come, and he waited to kill the
governor if he must. But the governor laughed, and said there were
many others. Mouth of God and I were married then by Monsieur Vernier,
in the church of his mother.

"That was the manner of my marriage. The same as that of the girls
in your own island, is it not?"

It was much the same, I said. It differed only in some slight
matters of custom. She listened fascinated while I described to her
our complicated conventions of courtship, our calling upon young
ladies for months and even years, our gifts, our entertainments, our
giving of rings, our setting of the marriage months far in the future,
our orange wreaths and veils and bridesmaids. She found these things
almost incredible.

"Marriage here," she said, "may come to a young man when he does not
seek or even expect it. No Marquesan can marry without the consent
of his mother, and often she marries him to a girl without his even
thinking of such a thing.

"A young man may bring home a girl he does not know, perhaps a girl
he has seen on the beach in the moonlight, to stay with him that
night in his mother's house. It may be that her beauty and charm
will so please his mother that she will call a family council after
the two have gone to bed. If the family thinks as the mother does,
they determine to marry the young man to that girl, and they do so
after this fashion:

"Early in the morning, just at dawn, before the young couple awake,
all the women of the household arouse them with shrieks. They beat
their breasts, cut themselves with shells, crying loudly, _Aue! Aue!_
Neighbors rush in to see who has died. The youth and the girl run
forth in terror. Then the mother, the grandmother and all other
women of the house chant the praises of the girl, singing her beauty,
and wailing that they cannot let her go. They demand with anger that
the son shall not let her go. All the neighbors cry with them,
_Aue! Aue!_ and beat their breasts, until the son, covered with
shame, asks the girl to stay.

"Then her parents are sent the word, and if they do not object, the
girl remains in his house. That is often the manner of Marquesan
marriage."

Yet often, of course, she explained, marriage was not the outcome of
a night's wooing. The young Marquesan fre