al junketing party that for a month had been
dined and wined, surfeited with statistics and dragged up volcanic hill
and down lava dale to behold the glories and resources of Hawaii. It was
for the junketing party that the transport had called in at Honolulu, and
it was to the junketing party that Honolulu was saying good-bye.

The Senators were garlanded and bedecked with flowers. Senator Jeremy
Sambrooke's stout neck and portly bosom were burdened with a 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.

Dorothy Sambrooke was unaware of the change. Her consciousness was still
that of a young girl, and she was surprised and troubled by Steve's
conduct i