Chapter LVIII
The time came for my departure from Tahiti. Acc to the gracious of the island, presents were given me by the persons with whom I had been thrown in tact-baskets made of the leaves of the ut tree, mats of pandanus, fans；and Tiaré gave me three little pearls and three jars of guava-jelly made with her own plump hands.When the mail-boat, stopping for twenty-four hours on its way from Wellington to San Francisco, blew the whistle that warhe passeo get on
board, Tiaré clasped me to her vast bosom, so that I seemed to sink into a billowy sea, and pressed her red lips to miears glistened in her eyes.And wheeamed slowly out of the lagoon, making our way gingerly through the opening in the reef, and then steered for the open sea, a certain melancholy fell upohe breeze was laden still with the pleasant odours of the land.Tahiti is very far away, and I khat I should never see it again.A chapter of my life was closed, and I felt a l
ittle o iable death.
Not much more than a month later I was in London；and after I had arranged certain matters which claimed my immediate attention, thinking Mrs. Strid might like to hear what I knew of her husband''''s last years, I wrote to her.I had not seen her since long before the war, and I had to look out her address ielephone-book.She made an appoi, and I went to the trim little house on Campden Hill which she now inhabited.She was by this time a woman of hard
on sixty, but she bore her years well, and no one would have taken her for more than ffty.Her face, thin and not much lined, was of the sort that ages gracefully, so that you thought in youth she must have been a much handsomer woman than in fact she was.Her hair, not yet very grey, was beingly arranged, and her black gown was modish.I remembered having heard that her sister, Mrs.Madrew, outliving her husband but a couple of years, had left moo Mrs.Strid；and by the look of the h
ouse and the trim maid who opehe door I judged that it was a sum adequate to keep the widow in modest fort.
When I was ushered into the drawing-room I found that Mrs. Strid had a visitor, and when I discovered who he was, I guessed that I had been asked to e at just that time not without iion.The caller was Mr.Van Busche Taylor, an Ameri, and Mrs.Strid gave me particulars with a charming smile of apology to him.
“You know, we English are so dreadfully ignorant. You mus
t five me if it''''s necessary to explain.”Theuro me.“Mr.Van Busche Taylor is the distinguished Ameri critic.If you haven''''t read his book your education has been shamefully ed, and you must repair the omission at once.He''''s writing something about dear Charlie, and he''''s e to ask me if I help him.”
Mr. Van Busche Taylor was a very thin man with a large, bald head, bony and shining；and uhe great dome of his skull his face, yellow, with deep lines in it, looked very
small.He was quiet and exceedingly polite.He spoke with the at of New England, and there was about his demeanour a bloodless frigidity which made me ask myself why oh he was busying himself with Charles Strid.I had been slightly tickled at the gentleness which Mrs.Strid put into her mention of her husband''''s name, and while the pair versed I took stock of the room in which we sat.Mrs.Strid had moved with the times.Gohe Morris papers and gohe severe creton