ABSTRACT
It was about noon, on a calm and scorching day, when first I saw my little friend Rarahu. The young Tahitian women who frequented the Falls, drowsy with the heat, were lying on the grassy bank close to the stream, their feet dipping in the clear cool water. The same green shade lay over us, vertical and motionless; large black velvet butterflies marked with lavender eyes fluttered languidly past, or rested on us, as though their sheeny wings were too heavy to bear them; the air was charged with heady and unfamiliar perfume; quite unconsciously I abandoned myself to this enervating existence, overborne by the Oceanian spell.
