XIV

Rarahu wore the costume of the island, the flowing, waistless tunics known as tapa. She wore hers long and trailing, with almost European elegance. She could already distinguish a new shape or cut of the sleeves or body, and certain pretty or ugly fashions. She was already a civilized and coquettish little lady. In the day-time she wore a broad-brimmed hat of fine white Tahitian straw, tilted forward over her eyes; on the crown, which was low like that of a sailor's hat, she would put a wreath of natural leaves or flowers. She had grown fairer in the shade, and living the town-life; and many a brown-bosomed Andalusian would have looked darker than my little Tahitian. But for the slight tattoo marks on her forehead, which her companions laughed at and I thought pretty, she would have passed for a white-skin. But still, in certain lights, her skin was shot, as it were, with a rosycopper 100hue, an exotic tinge which betrayed the Maori race in its affinity with the red-skin Indians of America.