f her and tried to eat. He wondered what she would say if he told her
now that the fat old man sitting in the chair was the lover whom she
remembered still with the passionate abandonment of her youth. Years
ago, when he hated her because she made him so unhappy, he would have
been glad to tell her. He wanted to hurt her then as she hurt him,
because his hatred was only love. But now he did not care. He shrugged
his shoulders listlessly.

"What did that man want?" she asked presently.

He did not answer at once. She was old too, a fat old native woman. He
wondered why he had ever loved her so madly. He had laid at her feet all
the treasures of his soul, and she had cared nothing for them. Waste,
what waste! And now, when he looked at her, he felt only contempt. His
patience was at last exhausted. He answered her question.

"He's the captain of a schooner. He's come from Apia."

"Yes."

"He brought me news from home. My eldest brother is very ill and I must
go back."

"Will you be gone long?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

V

_The Pool_

When I was introduced to Lawson by Chaplin, the owner of the Hotel
Metropole at Apia, I paid no particular attention to him. We were
sitting in the lounge over an early cocktail and I was listening with
amusement to the gossip of the island.

Chaplin entertained me. He was by profession a mining engineer and
perhaps it was characteristic of him that he had settled in a place
where his professional attainments were of no possible value. It was,
however, generally reported that he was an extremely clever mining
engineer. He was a small man, neither fat nor thin, with black hair,
scanty on the crown, turning grey, and a small, untidy moustache; his
face, partly from the sun and partly from liquor, was very red. He was
but a figurehead, for the hotel, though so grandly named but a frame
building of two storeys, was managed by his wife, a tall, gaunt
Australian of five and forty, with an imposing presence and a determined
air. The little man, excitable and often tipsy, was terrified of her,
and the stranger soon heard of domestic quarrels in which she used her
fist and her foot in order to keep him in subjection. She had been
known after a night of drunkenness to confine him for twenty-four hours
to his own room, and then he could be seen, afraid to leave his prison,
talking somewhat pathetically from his verandah to people in the street
below.

He was a character, and