y for a tombstone (I daren't
write headstone, though it was one, about the size of a silk hat) and
put it behind the bakery above the spot where O's head was buried in a
gin case.

When a girl has gone a certain length she seems less able than a man to
withstand a disappointment in love. Silver Tongue simply clenched his
teeth, withdrew from the Concordia Club and the Wednesday night bowls at
Conrad's, and went on baking bread and rolls much as usual. Poor Rosalie
drooped like a flower in the sun, and though she had pride enough to act
a part and show a becoming spirit before the world, she had received a
wound that I sometimes feared might prove mortal. I sent her to Tonga
Taboo for a month, and she came back no better, her eyes black ringed
and her cheeks hollow, and her smile (always to me the most beautiful
smile in the world), with a curious, haunting pathos that I remember so
well in the old slaving days among the Line women in their chains.

You must not think I tamely acquiesced in this state of affairs, or
allowed my old friend an undisturbed possession of the Kanaka quarters
behind the bakery. Late or early I gave him no peace, and plagued him, I
dare say, to the very verge of distraction. But I might as well have
tried to argue with his bread or soften his brick furnace for any
impression I succeeded in making upon him. In his crazy obstinacy he
would listen to nothing, and I would find myself, after one of these
interviews, in a state of indescribable exasperation and determined
never to go near him again.

One night, when I was up at Malifa calling on a dear good friend of
mine, Sasa French, a charming and most accomplished young native lady,
our talk happened to run for the thousandth time on this vexing matter
of Rosalie and Silver Tongue. All of a sudden an idea came into Sasa's
pretty head--one of those brilliant, clever, feminine ideas--that seemed
to us, in that triumphant moment, to be the means of untangling all our
difficulties. Though it was eight o'clock, and there was the risk of
gossip in my driving Sasa French alone about the Municipality at such an
hour, I put her into my buggy, whipped up my horse, and set a straight
course for Seumanutafa, the high chief of Apia. He laughed a good deal,
demurred somewhat, and was finally persuaded to squeeze his Herculean
dimensions into the trap and start off with us for To'oto'o's house at
Songi. Here, after the usual ceremonious exchanges, the womenfol