life on Naapu by being _dame
de comptoir_ for him, he had some right to his judgment. She had
eventually preferred independence, and had forsaken him; and if he still
had no quarrel with her, that speaks loudly for her many virtues.
Whether Dubois had sent for her originally, no one knew. His memory was
clouded by opium, and you could get little out of him. Besides, by the
time I arrived on Naapu, French Eva belonged to the landscape and to
history. She was generally supposed to be pure French, and her accent
supported the theory, though she was in a small way a linguist. Her
English was as good as any one's--on Naapu, where we were by no means
academic. She could speak the native tongue after a fashion, and her
beche-de-mer was at least fluent.

I had heard of the lady before I ever saw her, and had wondered why
Naapu chose to distinguish a female fish-vender--even if she had begun
with old Dubois. As soon as I clapped eyes on her, I perceived her
distinction, her "difference"--the reason for the frequent "Mam'selle."
She was, at first glimpse, unusual. To begin with, never was so white a
face matched with hair and brows and eyes so black. In the ordinary
pursuit of her business she wore her hair half loose, half braided, down
her back; and it fell to her knees like a heavy crape veil. A bad
simile, you will say; but there are no words to express the unrelieved
blackness of her hair. There were no lights in it; no "reflets," to use
the French phrase. It might have been "treated" with ink. When, on rare
occasions--not often, for the weight of it, as she freely explained,
made her head ache--she put it up in coils, it was like a great mourning
bonnet under which her white face seemed to shrink away. Her eyes were
nearly as black as her hair. Her figure was very lovely, whether in
forming the loose native garment or laced into her silk dress.

You will say that I have painted for you a person who could not, by any
possibility, be beautiful; and yet French Eva was beautiful. You got
used to that dull curtain of her hair; it made Madame Mauer's lustrous
raven locks look oily. It came to seem, after a time, all that hair
should be. Her features were nearly perfect from our finicking European
point of view, and she grew in grace even while I, a newcomer, watched;
for the effect of the tropic sun upon her skin was curious and lovely:
it neither blotched nor reddened nor tanned her, but rather gilded her
pallor, touching it wi