if in him and from him perfection were engendered and conjured
within myself.

"No word was spoken. But, oh, I know I raised my face in frank
answer to the thunder and trumpets of the message unspoken, and
that, had it been death for that one look and that one moment I
could not have refrained from the gift of myself that must have
been in my face and eyes, in the very body of me that breathed so
high.

"Was I beautiful, very beautiful, Martha, when I was nineteen, just
turning into twenty?"

And Martha, three-score and four, looked upon Bella, three-score
and eight, and nodded genuine affirmation, and to herself added the
appreciation of the instant in what she beheld--Bella's neck, still
full and shapely, longer than the ordinary Hawaiian woman's neck, a
pillar that carried regally her high-cheeked, high-browed, high
chiefess face and head; Bella's hair, high-piled, intact, sparkling
the silver of the years, ringleted still and contrasting definitely
and sharply with her clean, slim, black brows and deep brown eyes.
And Martha's glance, in modest overwhelming of modesty by what she
saw, dropped down the splendid breast of her and generously true
lines of body to the feet, silken clad, high-heeled-slippered,
small, plump, with an almost Spanish arch and faultlessness of
instep.

"When one is young, the one young time!" Bella laughed. "Lilolilo
was a prince. I came to know his every feature and their every
phase . . . afterward, in our wonder days and nights by the singing