er no
self-respecting officer deals with--"

"None of that!" I said sharply. "He's a good man, Stires. A darned sight
too good for the Naapu grafters. A darned sight too good to go native--"
Then I stopped, for Follet was hardly himself, nor did I like the look
of myself as a common scold.

We did not find Stires, and after an hour or two we gave up the search.
By dusk, Follet had got to the breaking-point. He was jumpy. I took him
back myself to the hotel, and pushed him viciously into Ching Po's arms.
The expressionless Chinese face might have been a mask for all the
virtues; and he received the shaking burden of Follet as meekly as a
sister of charity.

I bought some tinned things for my dinner and took my way home. I should
not, I felt sure, be interrupted, and I meant to turn in early. Madame
Mauer would be telling the tale to her husband; Follet would, of a
certainty, be drunk; and Stires would be looking, I supposed, for French
Eva. French Eva, I thought, would take some finding; but Stires was the
best man for the job. It was certainly not my business to notify any one
that night. So I chowed alone, out of the tins, and smoked a long
time--alone--in the moonlight.

* * * * *

It was not Stires, after all, who found her, though he must have hunted
the better part of that night. It was three days before she was washed
ashore. She was discovered by a crew of fishermen whom she had often
beaten down in the way of business. They brought her in from the remote
cove, with loud lamentations and much pride. She must have rocked back
and forth between the shore and the reef, for when they found her, her
body was badly battered. From the cliff above, they said, she looked at
first like a monstrous catch of seaweed on the sand Her hair--

Follet had treated himself to a three days' drinking-bout, and only
emerged, blanched and palsied, into a town filled with the clamor of her
funeral. Stires had shut up his junk-shop for a time and stayed strictly
at home. I went to see him, the day after they found her. His face was
drawn and gloomy, but it was the face of a man in his right mind. I
think his worst time was that hour after Follet had followed Ching Po
out of his warehouse. He never told me just how things had stood between
French Eva and him, but I am sure that he believed Ching Po at once, and
that, from the moment Ching Po spoke, it was all over. It was no longer
even real to him, s