“I have long wanted to talk with an intelligent American on that subject; with some one who knew Europe and his own country and these islands. There is a vast hypocrisy in the writing and the talking about it. Now, Maru (I already had been given my native name), the woman of Tahiti exercises the same sexual freedom as the average white man does in your country and in England or France. She pursues the man she wants, as he does the woman. Your women pursue, too, but they do it by cunning, by little lies, by coquetry, by displaying their persons, by flattery, and by feeding you.
“The Tahitian woman makes the first advances in friendship openly, if she chooses. She arranges time and place for amours as your women do. She does not take from the Tahitian man or from the foreigner his right to choose, but she chooses herself, too. I feel sure that often an American woman would give hours of pain to know well a certain man, but makes no honest effort to draw him toward her. They have told me so!”
I got up, and standing beside her, I quoted:
“Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing;
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and silence.”
“Mais, c’est vrai!” she said, musingly. “The Tahitian woman will not endure that. She is on a par with the man in seeking. Without fear and without shame, and, attendez, Maru, without any more monogamy than you men. I have told some of those suffrage ladies of London and of Washington that we are in advance of their most determined feminism. They will come to it. More women than men in Europe will bring it there.”
Her long, black lashes touched her cheeks.
“We are a little sleepy, n’est-ce pas?” she asked. “B’en, we will have a taoto.”
She made herself a pillow of leaves with her pareu, and arranging her hair in two braids, she stretched herself out, with her face toward the sky, and a cool banana-leaf laid over it. I copied her action, and lulled by the falling water, the rippling of the pool, and the drowsy rustling of the trees, I fell fast asleep, and dreamed of Eve and the lotus-eaters.
When I awoke, the princess was refreshing her face and hands in the water.
“A hio! Look!” she said eagerly. “O tane and O vahine!”