She shut the box, and with set lips took a match, lit it, and set fire to the photograph. It burned very slowly, and the flame seemed to lick sympathetically round her own heart as it crawled about the handsome, debonair, but sensual face, lit up, and then put out, the laughing eyes, crackled through the curly hair and the white naval cap, and at last reduced the whole bright picture to a little pile of feathery black ash—dead, dead, dead!
Vaiti dropped the charred fragments from her hands, and then put her head down upon the mats and lay very still....
When morning broke through the narrow door of the hut, the rays of the rising sun fell upon the figure of a girl with a cold, expressionless face, sitting upon the threshold, hard at work with needle and thread. Upon her lap lay a pile of golden gauze.
That afternoon the King drove late in the forest. The sun was near setting, and the rays were slanting long and low among the red trunks of the gloomy casuarina trees, when the spirited blacks came galloping up to the cottage. Every day they had passed it by, a still, brown nest in the shadows, where nothing moved, but this evening, as they reached the spot, something caused them to check and shy, and the King, splendid driver as he was, had some difficulty in pulling them in. When he had succeeded, he glanced at the object that had caused their fright, and saw a vision startling enough to astonish even himself.
A stranger girl of exceeding beauty stood in the midst of the forest clearing. She was dressed in a robe of magnificent golden tissue, from which the level rays of the westering sun sparkled back in a halo of almost supernatural glory. On her head was a wreath of blood-red hibiscus flowers, and her exquisite right arm, bare except for a twisted chain of gold, held up an island kava cup of carved cocoanut shell. When she saw that the King observed her, she sank on her knees, bent her neck, and raised the cup higher in both hands above her head.
It was an invitation, and one that no Lialian could possibly have refused, for the drink brewed from the kava root, and the ceremonies connected with the brewing, tasting, and giving round, are almost a religion in those islands, and many a man, in the old wild days, has died for the insult of putting aside the proffered cup. Therefore the King descended at once, tied his horses to a tree, and advanced to take the cup from the hands of this unknown woman who understood royal etiquette so well. It was his Majesty's right to have his kava, and indeed all his food and drink, proffered in this especial attitude; but half-castes and whites were sometimes careless enough to forget the honour.
He drank the great bowlful at a draught, as a king should, and, sending the cup with a twirl to the ground, according to etiquette, cast a side glance at the beautiful cup-bearer. He hated strangers and distrusted foreigners, still...
"Will you not come in and rest, O Great Chief?" asked Vaiti in Lialian.
"Who are you?" said the King, still looking half away—but only half.
"Princess of Atiu, and daughter of the great English sea-captain Saxon," replied Vaiti, drawing herself up to her full height, and looking him straight in the eyes. The King met the look full this time, and thought that Litia's eyes, Lialian though she was, were not so bright by half. And if Mahina was fatter—as she certainly was—she never had such hair, or such a coral-red mouth. And what a magnificent dress the magnificent creature wore!