a half-caste, a paragon of kindness and fidelity, she might be. With
the white she would know only torture. There is but one American that
I know who has made a native girl happy. Lovina, who keeps the Tiare
Hotel in Papeite and who knows the gossip of all the South Seas,
told me the story one day after he had come to the hotel to fetch
two dinners to his home. He had a handsome motor-car, and the man
himself was so clean-looking, so precise in every word and motion,
that I spoke of the contrast to the skippers, officials, and
tourists who lounged about Lovina's bar.

"He is a strange one, that man," said Lovina. "Two years ago I have
nice girl here, wait on bar, look sweet, and I make her jus' so my
daughter. I go America for visit, and when I come back that girl
ruin'. That American take her 'way, and he come tell me straight he
couldn't help it. He jus' love her--mad. He build her fine house,
get automobile. She never work. Every day he come here get meals
take home."

That tall, straight chap, his hair prematurely gray, his face sad,
had made the barmaid the jewel of a golden setting. He devoted
himself and his income solely to her. Stranger still, he had made
her his legal wife.

But she is an exception rare as rain in Aden. These native girls of
mixed blood, living tragedies sprung from the uncaring selfishness
of the whites, struggle desperately to lift themselves above the
mire in which the native is sinking. They throw themselves away on
worthless adventurers, who waste their little patrimony, break their
hearts, and either desert them after the first flush of passion
passes, or themselves sink into a life of lazy slovenliness worse