him gone to find man-a-oui-oui. Parrot
tell him plenty wise thing. Parrot wiser than Boupari people; know very
good medicine; wise like Queensland lady and gentleman." And Mali set
herself vigorously to work to wash the wooden platter on which she served
up her mistress's yam for breakfast.

It was curious to Muriel to see how readily Mali had slipped from
savagery to civilization in Queensland, and how easily she had slipped
back again from civilization to savagery in Boupari. In waiting on her
mistress she was just the ordinary trained native Australian servant; in
every other respect she was the simple unadulterated heathen Polynesian.
She recognized in Muriel a white lady of the English sort, and treated
her within the hut as white ladies were invariably treated in Queensland;
but she considered that at Boupari one must do as Boupari does, and it
never for a moment occurred to her simple mind to doubt the omnipotence
of Tu-Kila-Kila in his island realm any more than she had doubted the
omnipotence of the white man and his local religion in their proper place
(as she thought it) in Queensland.

An hour or two passed before Felix returned. At last he arrived, very
white and pale, and Muriel saw at once by the mere look on his face that
he had learned some terrible news at the Frenchman's.

"Well, you found him?" she cried, taking his hand in hers, but hardly
daring to ask the fatal question at once.

And Felix, sitting down, as pale as a ghost, answered faintly, "Yes,
Muriel, I found him!"

"And he told you everything?"

"Everything he knew, my poor child. Oh, Muriel, Muriel, don't ask me what
it is. It's too terrible to tell you."

Muriel clasped her white hands together, held bloodless downward, and
looked at him fixedly. "Mali, you can go," she said. And the Shadow,
rising up with childish confidence, glided from the hut, and left them,
for the first time since their arrival on the central island, alone
together.

Muriel looked at him once more with the same deadly fixed look. "With
you, Felix," she said, slowly, "I can bear or dare anything. I feel as if
the bitterness of death were past long ago. I know it must come. I only
want to be quite sure when.... And besides, you must remember, I have
your promise."

Felix clasped his own hands despondently in return, and gazed across at
her from his seat a few feet off in unspeakable misery.

"Muriel," he cried, "I couldn't. I haven't the heart. I daren't."