It had never occurred to him before that Tehea might be dead.

He held back the undergrowth again and peered into the depths. Yes, it
was the grave of a chief, or of a woman of rank, one of those artless
mounds of cement and rock that the natives, with poetic fancy, used to
call _falelauasi_, houses of sandalwood; _oliolisanga_, or the place
where birds sing; or, in vulgar speech, simply _tuungamau_, or tombs.
These words, unspoken, unthought of for forty years, lost, overlaid, and
forgotten in some recess of his brain, now returned to him with
tormenting recollection. He laid both hands on the thick stem of a shrub
and tore it out of the ground. He seized another and dragged it out with
the same ferocity. It was intolerable that she should suffocate under
all this warm, wet jungle; he would give her air and sunshine, she that
had loved them both; he would uncover the poor stones that marked her
last resting place; he would lay bare the earth that wrapped her dead
beauty.

He worked with desperation until his hands were bleeding, until his eyes
were stung and blinded with the streaming sweat. Dizzy with the heat,
parched with thirst, and sick with the steam that rose from the damp
ground, he was forced again and again to desist and rest. He cut his
waistcoat into slips and bound them round his bloody hands; he broke the
blades of his penknife on recalcitrant roots that defied the strength of
his arms; he labored with fury to complete the task he had set before
him. Here he stood, within four walls of vegetation, the sky above him,
the cracked and rotted tomb below, satisfied at last by the
accomplishment of his duty. The gold on his sleeves was dirty and
disordered; one of his shoulder-straps dangled loose from his sodden
coat; his trousers were splashed with earth. But for the moment the post
captain was forgotten in the man, as he mused on the tragedy of human
life, on the mysteries of love and death and destiny, on his own
irrevocable youth now so far behind him, when he had forfeited his honor
for the dead woman at his feet. He called her aloud by name. He bent
down and kissed her mossy bed. He whispered, with a strange conviction
that she could hear him, that he had kept his promise to return.

Then, rising to his feet, he turned toward the sea and retraced his
steps. The people were still in church, and the village was deserted as
before. He walked swiftly lest they might come flocking out before he
could reach