Signet, in the course of the afternoon, brought forth gravely a bill of sale, making over in an orderly fashion to B.R. Signet, New York, U.S.A., the real and personal property of the trading station at Taai, and "signed" in the identical, upright, Fourteenth Street grammar-school script, by "the Dutchman."--I understood Signet. Signet understood me. The thing was not even an attempt at forgery. It was something solely formal--as much as to say: "This is understood to be the basis of our mutual dealings. You will see I am owner of this place." As for the Dutchman: "Oh, the Dutchman? Well, he decided to go away. Go home." Before the incalculable sang-froid of this rail bird, movie usher, alley dodger, and hanger-on at dancing academies, I could not so much as summon up the cheek to ask what he had done with the body. You'll say I ought to have acted; that I ought at least to have got up and left him. That shows two things--first, that you've never been a trader in the islands; second, that you cannot at all comprehend how--well, how _stunning_ he was. Sitting there, a single fortnight removed from cotton pants and the beach, crime-stained, imperturbable, magnificent! Spawn of the White Lights! Emperor of an island! How's that? "It's a rich island," he impressed upon me with an intention I was yet to plumb. "Dole," he exclaimed, "it's a gold mine!" "Is--is _she_ here?" I ventured to demand at last. "_Is_ she? Say! Come and have a look." I was between laughing and wincing at that "have a look." Going up the garden, Signet let me know that the woman was in love with him. I might believe it or not. She would do anything for him. "_Anything!_" he exclaimed, standing squarely still in the path. And in his eyes I was somehow relieved to find a trace of wonder. Obstacles! All his life had been a turning back from small, insurmountable obstacles. Of a sudden he beheld really vast obstacles tumbling down, verily at a touch. Here was just one more of them. By a lucky chance this "Queen Daughter" did not know by whose hand she had been made thrice a widow; it was the simplest thing to suppose it the trader, the same big, blond, European man who had presently removed her "for safety" to the summer house behind the Residence.--And from the trader, by a gesture of melodramatic violence, the other and slighter man had set her free.--Perhaps even that would not have intrigued her essentially barbaric interest as much as it did had it not been for his amazing attitude of, well, let's say, "refrainment." His almost absurdly fastidious concern for what the West would call "the sanctity of her person." You can imagine--to a Marquesan woman! That! She was not ugly!