"An old inhabitant can guess. But why she should be afraid of him--even the old inhabitant doesn't know. There's Dubois; but you might as well shriek at a corpse as ask Dubois anything." "You don't think that I'd better go over and make sure that Ching Po isn't annoying her?" Follet's lips drew back over his teeth in his peculiar smile. "If I had thought he could annoy her, I'd have been over there myself a short time ago. If he really annoyed French Eva any day, he'd be nothing but a neat pattern of perforations, and he knows it." "Then what has the oldest inhabitant guessed as to the cause of the quarrel?" I persisted. Since I was in it--well, I hate talk that runs in circles. "She hasn't honored me with her confidence. But, for a guess, I should say that in the happy time now past he had perhaps asked her to marry him. And--Naapu isn't Europe, but, you know, even here a lady might resent that." "But why does she let him into her house?" "That I can't tell you. But I can almost imagine being afraid of Ching Po myself." "Why don't you settle it up, one way or the other?" I _was_ a newcomer, you see. Follet laughed and took another cigarette. "We do very well as we are, I think. And I expect to go to Auckland next year." His voice trailed off fatuously in a cloud of smoke, and I knew then just why I disliked him. The fibre was rotten. You couldn't even hang yourself with it. I was destined to keep open house that day. Before Follet's last smoke-puff had quite slid through the open window, Madame Mauer, who was perpetually in mourning, literally darkened my doorway. Seeing Follet she became nervous--he did affect women, as I have said. What with her squint and her smile, she made a spectacle of herself before she panted out her staccato statement. Doctor Mauer was away with a patient on the other side of the island; and French Eva had been wringing her hands unintelligibly on the Mauers' porch. She--Madame Mauer--couldn't make out what the girl wanted.