m--even
the old inhabitant doesn't know. There's Dubois; but you might as well
shriek at a corpse as ask Dubois anything."

"You don't think that I'd better go over and make sure that Ching Po
isn't annoying her?"

Follet's lips drew back over his teeth in his peculiar smile. "If I had
thought he could annoy her, I'd have been over there myself a short time
ago. If he really annoyed French Eva any day, he'd be nothing but a neat
pattern of perforations, and he knows it."

"Then what has the oldest inhabitant guessed as to the cause of the
quarrel?" I persisted. Since I was in it--well, I hate talk that runs in
circles.

"She hasn't honored me with her confidence. But, for a guess, I should
say that in the happy time now past he had perhaps asked her to marry
him. And--Naapu isn't Europe, but, you know, even here a lady might
resent that."

"But why does she let him into her house?"

"That I can't tell you. But I can almost imagine being afraid of Ching
Po myself."

"Why don't you settle it up, one way or the other?" I _was_ a newcomer,
you see.

Follet laughed and took another cigarette. "We do very well as we are, I
think. And I expect to go to Auckland next year." His voice trailed off
fatuously in a cloud of smoke, and I knew then just why I disliked him.
The fibre was rotten. You couldn't even hang yourself with it.

I was destined to keep open house that day. Before Follet's last
smoke-puff had quite slid through the open window, Madame Mauer, who was
perpetually in mourning, literally darkened my doorway. Seeing Follet
she became nervous--he did affect women, as I have said. What with her
squint and her smile, she made a spectacle of herself before she panted
out her staccato statement. Doctor Mauer was away with a patient on the
other side of the island; and French Eva had been wringing her hands
unintelligibly on the Mauers' porch. She--Madame Mauer--couldn't make out
what the girl wanted.

Now, this was nothing to break in on me for; and Madame Mauer, in spite
of her squint and her smile, was both sensible and good--broke,
moreover, to the ridiculous coincidences and unfathomable dramas of
Naapu. Why hadn't she treated the girl for hysterics? But I gathered
presently that there was one element in it that she couldn't bear. That
element, it appeared, was Ching Po, perfectly motionless in the public
road--no trespasser, therefore--watching. She had got Eva into the house
to have her hysterics out in