o surely had his inborn prejudice worked. Stires was
no Pierre Loti.

In decency we had to mention her. There was a great to-do about it in
the town, and the tom-toms had mysteriously returned from the hillsides.

"I've been pretty cut up about it all," he admitted. "But there's no
doubt it's for the best. As I look back on it, I see she never was
comfortable in her mind. On and off, hot and cold--and I took it for
flightiness. The light broke in on me, all of a sudden, when that dirty
yellow rascal began to talk. But if you'll believe me, sir, I used to be
jealous of Follet. Think of it, now." He began to whittle.

Evidently her ravings to Madame Mauer had not yet come to his ears.
Madame Mauer was capable of holding her tongue; and there was a chance
Follet might hold his. At all events, I would not tell Stires how
seriously she had loved him. He was a very provincial person, and I
think--considering her pedigree--it would have shocked him.

French Eva's cerebrations are in some ways a mystery to me, but I am
sure she knew what she wanted. I fancy she thought--but, as I say, I do
not know--that the mode of her passing would at least make all clear to
Stires. Perhaps she hoped for tardy regrets on his part; an
ex-post-facto decision that it didn't matter. The hot-and-cold business
had probably been the poor girl's sense of honor working--though,
naturally, she couldn't have known (on Naapu) the peculiar
impregnability of Stires's prejudices. When you stop to think of it,
Stires and his prejudices had no business in such a place, and nothing
in earth or sky or sea could have foretold them to the population of
that landscape. Perhaps when she let herself go, in the strong seas, she
thought that he would be at heart her widower. Don't ask me. Whatever
poor little posthumous success of the sort she may have hoped for, she
at least paid for it heavily--and in advance. And, as you see, her ghost
never got what her body had paid for. It is just as well: why should
Stires have paid, all his life? But if you doubt the strength of her
sincerity, let me tell you what every one on Naapu was perfectly aware
of: she could swim like a Kanaka; and she must have let herself go on
those familiar waters, against every instinct, like a piece of
driftwood. Stires may have managed to blink that fact; but no one else
did.

Lockerbie gave a dinner-party at the end of the week, and Follet got
drunk quite early in the evening. He embarrass