XV

We had already spent many hours together, Rarahu and I, on the bank of the Fataoua river, when Pomaré made the startling suggestion that we should be married. And Pomaré, who knew everything she cared to know, knew that perfectly well. I had hesitated a long time. I had rebelled with all my might—and this strange state of things had gone on beyond all reason for several days; when we lay down for our noonday nap on the grass, Rarahu with her arms round me, we went to sleep side by side for the world like two brothers. It was a purely childish comedy that we played together, and very certainly no one would have suspected it. That the 27feeling “which gave Faust pause at Margaret's door” should come between me and a Tahitian girl, would have made me smile perhaps a few years later; it would at any rate have been a very good joke in the captain's room on board the Reindeer, and would have made me supremely ridiculous in the eyes of Tétouara.