minutes ago I bring her up just like Christian; be good, be true, do
her prayers, make her soul all right. Then I go San Francisco. What
you think? When I come back she ruin. 'Most break my heart. That man
he come to me, he say: 'Lovaina, I take good care that girl. I love
her.' That girl with him now. She happy, got plenty dress, plenty
best to eat, and nice buggy. I tell you, I give up trying save those
girl'. I think they like ruin best. I turn my back--they ruin."

Iromea was the sturdy veteran of the corps. Tall, handsome, straight,
mother of four children, obliging, wise in the way of the white,
herself all native.

"And the babies?" I inquired.

"They all scatter. Some in country; some different place," answered
Iromea, who ran from English to French to Tahitian, but of course
not with the ease of Lovaina, for that great heart knew many of the
cities of her father's land, was educated in needlework style, and
with a little dab of Yankee culture, now fast disappearing as she
grew older. One marked that tendency to reversion to the native type
and ways among many islanders who had been superficially coated with
civilization, but whom environment and heredity claim inexorably.

Iromea was thirty years old. She had been loved by many white men,
men of distinction here; sea-rovers, merchants, and lotus-eaters,
writers, painters, and wastrels.

Juillet, whose native name was Tiurai, helped old Madame Rose to care
for the rooms at the Tiare. She was thirteen years old, willowy,
with a beautiful, smiling face, and two long, black plaits. Though