best. A short two years and this magnificent creature, at the
summit of her magnificent success, was one of the leper squad
awaiting deportation to Molokai. Henley's lines came into my mind:-


"The poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers;
Life is, I think, a blunder and a shame."


I recoiled from my own future. If this awful fate fell to Lucy
Mokunui, what might my lot not be?--or anybody's lot? I was
thoroughly aware that in life we are in the midst of death--but to
be in the midst of living death, to die and not be dead, to be one
of that draft of creatures that once were men, aye, and women, like
Lucy Mokunui, the epitome of all Polynesian charms, an artist as
well, and well beloved of men -. I am afraid I must have betrayed
my perturbation, for Doctor Georges hastened to assure me that they
were very happy down in the settlement.

It was all too inconceivably monstrous. I could not bear to look at
her. A short distance away, behind a stretched rope guarded by a
policeman, were the lepers' relatives and friends. They were not
allowed to come near. There were no last embraces, no kisses of
farewell. They called back and forth to one another--last messages,
last words of love, last reiterated instructions. And those behind
the rope looked with terrible intensity. It was the last time they
would behold the faces of their loved ones, for they were the living
dead, being carted away in the funeral ship to the graveyard of
Molokai.