upon her. She had remained there upon the floor half an hour until my
audible breathing had compelled her to believe against her will that I
was asleep. Then she had fled and wept the night in humiliation. Never
in her young life had such a horror afflicted her.

I was stunned, and could only reiterate that I had not known of her
presence, and with a trinket from my pocket I dried her tears.

Rupert Brooke in a letter to a friend in England drew a little etching
of our lodging:

I am in a hovel at the back of my hotel, and contemplate the yard. The
extraordinary life of the place flows round and near my room--for
here no one, man or woman, scruples to come through one's room
at any moment, if it happens to be a shortcut. By day nothing much
happens in the yard--except when a horse tried to eat a hen, the other
afternoon. But by night, after ten, it is filled with flitting figures
of girls, with wreaths of white flowers, keeping assignations.... It is
all--all Papeete--like a Renaissance Italy with the venom taken out,
No, simpler, light-come and light-go, passionate and forgetful, like
children, and all the time South Pacific, that is to say unmalicious
and good-tempered.

When a steamship was in port the Tiare was a hurly-burly. Perhaps
forty or even a hundred extra patrons came for meals or drinks. It
was amusing to hear their uncomprehending anger at their failure to
obtain quick service or even a smile by their accustomed manner toward
dark peoples. The British, who were the majority of the travelers,
have a cold, autocratic attitude toward all who wait upon them,
but especially toward those of the colored races. In Tahiti they