"I shamed for you see me like this!" she said.

I was blushing all over, though why I don't know, but I faltered:

"Like a great American Beauty rose."

"Faded rose too big," exclaimed Lovaina, with the faintest air of
coquetry as I hastily shut the door.

A little while later, when I came to the dining-room for the first
breakfast, I met Lovaina in a blue-figured aahu of muslin and
lace, a close-fitting, sweeping nightgown, the single garment that
Tahitians wear all day and take off at night, a tunic, or Mother
Hubbard, which reveals their figures without disguise, unstayed,
unpetticoated. Lovaina was, as always, barefooted, and she took me
into her garden, one of the few cultivated in Tahiti, where nature
makes man almost superfluous in the decoration of the earth.

"This house my father give me when marry," said Lovaina. "My God! you
just should seen that arearea! Las' all day, mos' night. We jus' move
in. Ban's playin' from war-ship, all merry drinkin', dancin'. Never
such good time. I tell you nobody could walk barefoot one week,
so much broken glass in garden an' street."

Her goodly flesh shook with her laughter, her darkening eyes suffused
with happy tears at the memory, and she put her broad hand between
my shoulders for a moment as if to draw me into the rejoicing of her
wedding feast. She led me about the garden to show me how she had from
year to year planted the many trees, herbs, and bushes it contained. It