pale pastel tints.

Vanquished Often sat beside me, her dark hair falling over my knee,
and listened respectfully to the conversation of her elders, who
discussed the gods of the stranger.

They wondered what curious motive had impelled the Jews, the
_Aati-Ietu_, to kill _Ieto Kirito_ the Savior of the world.
They discussed the strange madness that had possessed _Iuda
Iskalota_, that he had first bought land with his forty pieces of
silver and then hanged himself to a _purau_ tree. Was it cocoanut
land? they asked. Was it not good land?

Often across the worn stones of the _paepae_ stole a _vei_, a
centipede, upon which a bare foot quickly stamped. The chief said
casually, "If he bite you, you no die; you have hell of a time."
They were not natives of the Marquesas originally, he said; they
came in the coal of ships. His patriotism outran his knowledge, for
the first discoverers bitterly berated these poisonous creatures,
though no more warmly than Neo, who drew heavily upon his stock of
English curses to tell his opinion of them.

When the time came for saying _apae kaoha_ my kindly hosts sought to
confer upon me the last proof of their friendliness. They proposed
that I marry Vanquished Often.

My refusal was incomprehensible to them, and Vanquished Often's
happy smile in the moonlight quickly faded to a look of pain and
humiliation. They had offered me their highest and most revered
expression of hospitality. To refuse it was as uncustomary and as