hardships now are the hardships on the way to the promised land.
Not always will the Hawaiians rule in Hawaii. Just as they let
their wealth slip out of their hands, so will their rule slip out
of their hands. Political power and the land always go together.
There will be great changes, revolutions no one knows how many nor
of what sort, save that in the end the haole will possess the land
and the rule. And in that day you may well be first lady of
Hawaii, just as surely as George Castner will be ruler of Hawaii.
It is written in the books. It is ever so where the haole
conflicts with the easier races. I, your Uncle Robert, who am
half-Hawaiian and half-haole, know whereof I speak. Be patient,
Bella, be patient.'

"'Dear Bella,' Uncle John would say; and I knew his heart was
tender for me. Thank God, he never told me to be patient. He
knew. He was very wise. He was warm human, and, therefore, wiser
than Uncle Robert and George Castner, who sought the thing, not the
spirit, who kept records in ledgers rather than numbers of heart-
beats breast to breast, who added columns of figures rather than
remembered embraces and endearments of look and speech and touch.
'Dear Bella,' Uncle John would say. He knew. You have heard
always how he was the lover of the Princess Naomi. He was a true
lover. He loved but the once. After her death they said he was
eccentric. He was. He was the one lover, once and always.
Remember that taboo inner room of his at Kilohana that we entered
only after his death and found it his shrine to her. 'Dear Bella,'
it was all he ever said to me, but I knew he knew.

"And I was nineteen, and sun-warm Hawaiian in spite of my three-
quarters haole blood, and I knew nothing save my girlhood