ere, and vague shapes born of things she had heard
about or dreamt of: she had thoughts about the sea and stars, the
flowers and birds.

Dick would listen to her as she talked, as a man might listen to the
sound of a rivulet. His practical mind could take no share in the
dreams of his other half, but her conversation pleased him.

He would look at her for a long time together, absorbed in thought. He
was admiring her.

Her hair, blue-black and glossy, tangled him in its meshes; he would
stroke it, so to speak, with his eyes, and then pull her close to him
and bury his face in it; the smell of it was intoxicating. He breathed
her as one does the perfume of a rose.

Her ears were small, and like little white shells. He would take one
between finger and thumb and play with it as if it were a toy, pulling
at the lobe of it, or trying to flatten out the curved part. Her
breasts, her shoulders, her knees, her little feet, every bit of her,
he would examine and play with and kiss. She would lie and let him,
seeming absorbed in some far-away thought, of which he was the object,
then all at once her arms would go round him. All this used to go on in
the broad light of day, under the shadow of the artu leaves, with no
one to watch except the bright-eyed birds in the leaves above.

Not all their time would be spent in this fashion. Dick was just as
keen after the fish. He dug up with a spade--improvised from one of the
boards of the dinghy--a space of soft earth near the taro patch and
planted the seeds of melons he found in the wood; he rethatched the
house. They were, in short, as busy as they could be in such a climate,
but love-making would come on them in fits, and then everything would
be forgotten. Just as one revisits some spot to renew the memory of a
painful or pleasant experience received there, they would return to the
valley of the idol and spend a whole afternoon in its shade. The
absolute happiness of wandering through the woods together, discovering
new flowers, getting lost, and finding their way again, was a thing
beyond expression.

Dick had suddenly stumbled upon Love. His courtship had lasted only
some twenty minutes; it was being gone over again now, and extended.

One day, hearing a curious noise from the tree above the house, he
climbed it. The noise came from the nest, which had been temporarily
left by the mother bird. It was a gasping, wheezing sound, and it came
from four wide-open beaks, so a