riety of feminine degradation and feminine shame, and had
sounded in his time all the squalid depths of sailor vice. With the
memory of these unspeakable contrasts, Fetuao's freshness, purity, and
beauty shone with a sort of angelic brightness. No, by God, she should
never come to harm through him; and, clenching his huge hands together,
he would repeat these words to himself when he sometimes felt his
resolution falter. For the sailor, who never until then had known a
modest woman, who had starved his whole life long for what his money
could never buy, whose heart at thirty was as virgin as a boy's, now
found himself moved by a sublime passion for the only creature that had
ever loved him.

For she did love him; of that, indeed, he had never the need to reassure
himself; and in the knowledge of her love he became, almost in spite of
himself, a better man. In her girlish self-abandonment Fetuao lacked the
artifices which older women would have used; she never thought to guard
herself, or to coquette with him. At night, as they walked hand in hand
about the village, or sat close together on some log or boat, she would
take his arm and draw it around her; she would lay her head against his
breast; she would press herself so close to him that he could hear her
beating heart. There was much of the mother in her love for him. He was
her great baby, to be caressed, kissed, crooned over, to be petted and
encouraged. Her tender laughter was always in his ears; she corrected
him as she might a child, with a sweet seriousness, and an implication
that his shame was hers whenever he blundered in Samoan etiquette; she
prompted him and pushed him through scenes of trying formality, and
drilled him assiduously in politeness.

In the moonlight, when they were alone together, she taught him how to
receive the _'ava_ cup; how to spill the libation to the gods; how to
invoke a proper blessing on the company. She taught him how to say "_O
susunga, lau susunga fo'i_," on entering a strange house; how to pull
the mat over his knee to express his fictitious dependence; how to join
in the chorus of "_Maliu mai, susu mai_" when others entered after him;
how, indeed, to comport himself everywhere with the finished courtesy of
a Samoan chief.

Thus the bright days passed, and months melted into months, and still
Jack remained an inmate of Faalelei's household. At first he had
accepted this strange life as a sort of holiday, never doubting but