knew that that was sufficient to put him outside the marriage pale.
It was a strange world. There was the Honourable A. S. Cleghorn,
who had married a dusky princess of the Kamehameha blood, yet men
considered it an honour to know him, and the most exclusive women of
the ultra-exclusive "Missionary Crowd" were to be seen at his
afternoon teas. And there was Steve. No one had disapproved of his
teaching her to ride a surf-board, nor of his leading her by the
hand through the perilous places of the crater of Kilauea. He could
have dinner with her and her father, dance with her, and be a member
of the entertainment committee; but because there was tropic
sunshine in his veins he could not marry her.

And he didn't show it. One had to be told to know. And he was so
good-looking. The picture of him limned itself on her inner vision,
and before she was aware she was pleasuring in the memory of the
grace of his magnificent body, of his splendid shoulders, of the
power in him that tossed her lightly on a horse, bore her safely
through the thundering breakers, or towed her at the end of an
alpenstock up the stern lava crest of the House of the Sun. There
was something subtler and mysterious that she remembered, and that
she was even then just beginning to understand--the aura of the male
creature that is man, all man, masculine man. She came to herself
with a shock of shame at the thoughts she had been thinking. Her
cheeks were dyed with the hot blood which quickly receded and left
them pale at the thought that she would never see him again. The
stem of the transport was already out in the stream, and the
promenade deck was passing abreast of the end of the dock.

"There's Steve now," her father said. "Wave good-bye to him,
Dorothy."