'Dear Bella,' Uncle John would say. He knew. You have heard
always how he was the lover of the Princess Naomi. He was a true
lover. He loved but the once. After her death they said he was
eccentric. He was. He was the one lover, once and always.
Remember that taboo inner room of his at Kilohana that we entered
only after his death and found it his shrine to her. 'Dear Bella,'
it was all he ever said to me, but I knew he knew.
"And I was nineteen, and sun-warm Hawaiian in spite of my three-
quarters haole blood, and I knew nothing save my girlhood
splendours at Kilohana and my Honolulu education at the Royal Chief
School, and my grey husband at Nahala with his grey preachments and
practices of sobriety and thrift, and those two childless uncles of
mine, the one with far, cold vision, the other the broken-hearted,
for-ever-dreaming lover of a dead princess.
"Think of that grey house! I, who had known the ease and the
delights and the ever-laughing joys of Kilohana, and of the Parkers
at old Mana, and of Puuwaawaa! You remember.
Pages:
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41