"My eyes were so taken up with the girl that for a full minute I paid no attention to my master. She had come to a halt under the platform, a couple of paces from me, with her eyes cast down upon the floor; and he on the platform was speaking. By and by he stopped, and glancing up I saw that he was motioning me to leave the room. Well, they had made no show as yet of ill-treating her; so I flung her one more look and obeyed, feeling pretty mean. I went out into the verandah, walked the length of it and turned--and there stood the girl right before me! Her little feet had followed me so softly that I had heard nothing; and now, as I stared at her, she crept close with a sort of sidelong motion, and knelt at my feet, at the same moment drawing her _sarong_ over her head to hide it. Then the truth came upon me--I was married! "Aoodya was her name. What else can I tell you about her, to describe her? She was a child, and all life came as play to her, yet she understood love to the tips of her little madder-brown fingers. She was my teacher, too, and I sat at her feet day after day and learned while she drilled the island-language into me; learned by the hour while she untwisted her hair and rubbed it with grated cocoanut, and broke off her toilet to point to this thing and that and tell me its name, laughing at my mistakes or flipping bits of betel at me by way of reward. I had no wife at home to vex my conscience at all. All day we played about Hamid's verandah like two children, and Hamid watched us with a sort of twinkle in his eye, seemingly well content. It was plain he had taken a fancy to me, and I thought, as time passed, he grew friendlier. "I blessed the old fellow, too. Had he not given me Aoodya? I puzzled my head over this favour, until Aoodya explained. 'You see,' she said, 'it was done to oblige the Hadji Hassan.' This was the old man who had listened to my performance on the bombardon. He lived in a stockaded house on the far side of the island, the chieftancy of which he and Hamid shared between them and without dispute. "'How should it oblige Hassan?' I asked. "'Because Hassan could not see or hear my lord and lover without longing to possess such a man for his very own. As who could?' And here she blew me a kiss. "'Thank you, jewel of my heart,' said I; 'but yet I don't see. Was it me he wanted, or the bombardon?' "'I fancy he thought of you together; but of course he did not ask for the big thing--that would have been greedy. He would be content with the little one, the what-you-call cornet; and--don't you see?' "'No doubt it's stupid of me, my dear,' said I, 'but I'll be shot if I do.'