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Updated: June 7, 2025


She had gone with Miss Bell, Dechartre, and Madame Marmet to the Chartrist convent of Ema. And now, in the intoxication of her visions, she forgot the care of the day before, the importunate letters, the distant reproaches, and thought of nothing in the world but cloisters chiselled and painted, villages with red roofs, and roads where she saw the first blush of spring.

She had gone with Miss Bell, Dechartre, and Madame Marmet to the Chartrist convent of Ema. And now, in the intoxication of her visions, she forgot the care of the day before, the importunate letters, the distant reproaches, and thought of nothing in the world but cloisters chiselled and painted, villages with red roofs, and roads where she saw the first blush of spring.

Ema, and Piha, and Ana, and Hirene, and Mehere; there they are, the pick and particular flower of all that is beautiful, fashionable, young, and marriageable in Tanoa. Bright and cheerful, neat and comely, pleasant partners at a bush-ball are these half-Anglicized daughters of the Ngatewhatua.

But the girl's merry, loving disposition would never let her tell her brother nor her father how she dreaded these visits of some of the rough traders from the other islands of the group to the house. Besides that, neither of them noticed Ema; for Jim always got as drunk as his father on such occasions of island harmony and foregathering of kindred spirits.

From the long windows a magnificent view spread away across the green valley of the Ema to the great monastery of the Certosa, a huge mediæval pile which resembled a mediæval fortress standing boldly against the background of the rolling Apennines. Scarcely had I stood there a moment when my blue-eyed young hostess, in a becoming black-and-cherry frock, entered, and greeting me, closed the door.

I am more wretched than the beggars we saw on the road to Ema. They had air to breathe, and I can breathe only you, whom I have not. Yet I am glad to have known you. That alone counts in my existence. A moment ago I thought I hated you. I was wrong; I adore you, and I bless you for the harm you have done me. I love all that comes to me from you."

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