“It was the end. We had never spoken. It was the end recognized and unmentioned. The yacht waited. We were days late. Honolulu called, and the news was that the King had gone particularly _pupule_” (insane), “that there were Catholic and Protestant missionary plottings, and that trouble with France was brewing. As they had landed at Kawaihae two weeks before with laughter and flowers and song, so they departed from Hilo. It was a merry parting, full of fun and frolic and a thousand last messages and reminders and jokes. The anchor was broken out to a song of farewell from Lilolilo’s singing boys on the quarterdeck, while we, in the big canoes and whaleboats, saw the first breeze fill the vessel’s sails and the distance begin to widen. “Through all the confusion and excitement, Lilolilo, at the rail, who must say last farewells and quip last jokes to many, looked squarely down at me. On his head he wore my _ilima lei_, which I had made for him and placed there. And into the canoes, to the favoured ones, they on the yacht began tossing their many _leis_. I had no expectancy of hope . . . And yet I hoped, in a small wistful way that I know did not show in my face, which was as proud and merry as any there. But Lilolilo did what I knew he would do, what I had known from the first he would do. Still looking me squarely and honestly in the eyes, he took my beautiful _ilima lei_ from his head and tore it across. I saw his lips shape, but not utter aloud, the single word _pau_” (finish). “Still looking at me, he broke both parts of the _lei_ in two again and tossed the deliberate fragments, not to me, but down overside into the widening water. _Pau_. It was finished . . . ” For a long space Bella’s vacant gaze rested on the sea horizon. Martha ventured no mere voice expression of the sympathy that moistened her own eyes. “And I rode on that day, up the old bad trail along the Hamakua coast,” Bella resumed, with a voice at first singularly dry and harsh. “That first day was not so hard. I was numb. I was too full with the wonder of all I had to forget to know that I had to forget it. I spent the night at Laupahoehoe. Do you know, I had expected a sleepless night. Instead, weary from the saddle, still numb, I slept the night through as if I had been dead.