and he placed himself by her side, and they
conversed together, and to each of them the words of the other seemed
most pleasant and engaging. Before they separated they arranged a time
when they might escape together, and then they returned to the
village.

When the time came for Te Ponga to leave his host he directed some
dozen men of his to go to the landing-place in the harbor, prepare one
large canoe in which he and his followers might escape, and then to
take the other canoes and cut the lashings which made the top sides
fast to the hulls. The next morning he announced that he must return
to his own country. The chief and his men accompanied him part of the
way to the harbor. Puhihuia and the other girls had stolen a little
way along the road, laughing and joking with the visitors. The chief,
seeing his daughter going on after he had turned back, called out,
"Children, children, come back here!" Then the other girls stopped and
ran back toward the village, but as to Puhihuia, her heart beat but to
the one thought of escaping with her beloved Te Ponga. So she began to
run. Te Ponga and his men joined in the swift flight, and as soon as
they had reached the water they jumped into their canoe, seized their
paddles and shot away, swift as a dart from a string. When the
pursuing villagers arrived at the beach they laid hold of another
canoe, but found that the lashings of all had been cut, so that
pursuit was impossible. Thus the party that had come to make peace
returned joyfully to their own country, with the enemy's young
chieftainess, while their foes stood like fools upon the shore,
stamping with rage and threatening them in vain.

These stories are undoubtedly romantic; but again I ask, are they
stories of romantic love? There is romance and quaint local color in
the feat of the girl who, reversing the story of Hero and Leander,
swam over to her lover; in the wooing of the two girls proposing to an
unseen man up a tree; in the action of the chief who saved the
beautiful girl and her father from dying of thirst, and acted so that
his men came to the conclusion he must love her "almost as well" as
war; in the slyly planned elopement of Te Ponga. But there is nothing
to indicate the quality of the love--to show an "illumination of the
senses by the soul," or a single altruistic trait. Even such touches
of egoistic sentimentality as the phrase "To the heart of each of them
the other appeared pleasing and worthy, so