And she said, "Oh!" in a rather disappointed tone and looked away.
"We seem to be making conversation chiefly about my personal appearance," she said, presently. "There must be other topics if one should try hard to find them. Tell me stories. You told me stories yesterday; tell me more. You seem to be in a classical mood. You shall be Odysseus, and I will be Nausicaa, the interesting laundress. Tell me about wanderings and things. Have you any more islands for me?"
"Yes," said Ste. Marie, nodding at her slowly. "Yes, Nausicaa, I have more islands for you. The seas are full of islands. What kind do you want?"
"A warm one," said the girl. "Even on a hot day like this I choose a warm one, because I hate the cold."
She settled herself more comfortably, with a little sigh of content that was exactly like a child's happy sigh when stories are going to be told before the fire.
"I know an island," said Ste. Marie, "that I think you would like because it is warm and beautiful and very far away from troubles of all kinds. As well as I could make out, when I went there, nobody on the island had ever even heard of trouble. Oh yes, you'd like it. The people there are brown, and they're as beautiful as their own island. They wear hibiscus flowers stuck in their hair, and they very seldom do any work."
"I want to go there!" cried Mlle. Coira O'Hara. "I want to go there now, this afternoon, at once! Where is it?"
"It's in the South Pacific," said he, "not so very far from Samoa and Fiji and other groups that you will have heard about, and its name is Vavau. It's one of the Tongans. It's a high, volcanic island, not a flat, coral one like the southern Tongans. I came to it, one evening, sailing north from Nukualofa and Haapai, and it looked to me like a single big mountain jutting up out of the sea, black-green against the sunset. It was very impressive. But it isn't a single mountain, it's a lot of high, broken hills covered with a tangle of vegetation and set round a narrow bay, a sort of fjord, three or four miles long, and at the inner end of this are the village and the stores of the few white traders. I'm afraid," said Ste. Marie, shaking his head--"I'm afraid I can't tell you about it, after all. I can't seem to find the words. You can't put into language--at least, I can't--those slow, hot, island days that are never too hot because the trades blow fresh and strong, or the island nights that are more like black velvet with pearls sewed on it than anything else. You can't describe the smell of orange groves and the look of palm-trees against the sky. You can't tell about the sweet, simple, natural hospitality of the natives. They're like little, unsuspicious children. In short," said he, "I shall have to give it up, after all, just because it's too big for me. I can only say that it's beautiful and unspeakably remote from the world, and that I think I should like to go back to Vavau and stay a long time, and let the rest of the world go hang."
Mlle. O'Hara stared across the park of La Lierre with wide and shadowy eyes, and her lips trembled a little.
"Oh, I want to go there!" she cried again. "I want to go there--and rest--and forget everything!" She turned upon him with a sudden bitter resentment. "Why do you tell me things like that?" she cried. "Oh yes, I know. I asked you, but--can't you see? To hide one's self away in a place like that!" she said. "To let the sun warm you and the trade-winds blow away--all that had ever tortured you! Just to rest and be at peace!" She turned her eyes to him once more. "You needn't be afraid that you have failed to make me see your island! I see it. I feel it. It doesn't need many words. I can shut my eyes and I am there. But it was a little cruel. Oh, I know, I asked for it. It's like the garden of the Hesperides, isn't it?"