dozen wreaths. Out of this mass of bloom and blossom projected his
head and the greater portion of his freshly sunburned and perspiring
face. He thought the flowers an abomination, and as he looked out
over the multitude on the wharf it was with a statistical eye that
saw none of the beauty, but that peered into the labour power, the
factories, the railroads, and the plantations that lay back of the
multitude and which the multitude expressed. He saw resources and
thought development, and he was too busy with dreams of material
achievement and empire to notice his daughter at his side, talking
with a young fellow in a natty summer suit and straw hat, whose
eager eyes seemed only for her and never left her face. Had Senator
Jeremy had eyes for his daughter, he would have seen that, in place
of the young girl of fifteen he had brought to Hawaii a short month
before, he was now taking away with him a woman.

Hawaii has a ripening climate, and Dorothy Sambrooke had been
exposed to it under exceptionally ripening circumstances. Slender,
pale, with blue eyes a trifle tired from poring over the pages of
books and trying to muddle into an understanding of life--such she
had been the month before. But now the eyes were warm instead of
tired, the cheeks were touched with the sun, and the body gave the
first hint and promise of swelling lines. During that month she had
left books alone, for she had found greater joy in reading from the
book of life. She had ridden horses, climbed volcanoes, and learned
surf swimming. The tropics had entered into her blood, and she was
aglow with the warmth and colour and sunshine. And for a month she
had been in the company of a man--Stephen Knight, athlete, surf-
board rider, a bronzed god of the sea who bitted the crashing
breakers, leaped upon their backs, and rode them in to shore.