I soothed his misanthropy with two fingers of rum, and he mellowed
into advice.

"I saw you with that daughter of Liha-Liha," he said, using the
native name of the dead millionaire. "You be careful. One time I
baked bread in Taaoa. My oven was near his plantation. I saw that
girl come into the woods and take off her dress. She had a mirror to
see her back, and I looked, and the sun shone bright. What she saw,
I saw--a patch of white. She is a leper, that rich girl."

His eyes were full of hate.

"You don't like her," I said. "Why?"

"Why? Why?" he screamed. "Because her father was an accursed villian.
He was always kissing the dirty hands of the priests. He used to
give his workmen opium to make them work faster, and then he would
go to church. He made his money, yes. He was damn hypocrite. And now
his daughter, with all that rotten money, is a leper. I tell
everybody what I saw. Everybody here knows it but you. Everybody
will know it in Tahiti if she goes there."

The man was like a snake to me. I threw away the glass he had drunk
from. And yet--was it idle curiosity, or was it fear of being shut
away in the valley outside Papeite by the quarantine officers, that
made her ask me that question about the segregation of lepers?

Liha-Liha had spent thirty years making money. He had coined the
sweat and blood and lives of a thousand Marquesans into a golden