given them their first exhibition of
surf riding, out at Waikiki Beach, paddling his narrow board seaward
until he became a disappearing speck, and then, suddenly reappearing,
rising like a sea-god from out of the welter of spume and churning
white--rising swiftly higher and higher, shoulders and chest and loins
and limbs, until he stood poised on the smoking crest of a mighty, mile-
long billow, his feet buried in the flying foam, hurling beach-ward with
the speed of an express train and stepping calmly ashore at their
astounded feet. That had been her first glimpse of Steve. He had been
the youngest man on the committee, a youth, himself, of twenty. He had
not entertained by speechmaking, nor had he shone decoratively at
receptions. It was in the breakers at Waikiki, in the wild cattle drive
on Manna Kea, and in the breaking yard of the Haleakala Ranch that he had
performed his share of the entertaining.

She had not cared for the interminable statistics and eternal
speechmaking of the other members of the committee. Neither had Steve.
And it was with Steve that she had stolen away from the open-air feast at
Hamakua, and from Abe Louisson, the coffee planter, who had talked
coffee, coffee, nothing but coffee, for two mortal hours. It was then,
as they rode among the tree ferns, that Steve had taught her the words of
"Aloha Oe," the song that had been sung to the visiting Senators at every
village, ranch, and plantation departure.

Steve and she had been much together from the first. He had been her
playfellow. She had taken possession of him while her father had been
occupied in taking possession of the statistics of the island territory.
She was too gentle to tyrannize over her playfellow, yet she had ruled
him abjectly, except when in canoe, or on horse or surf-board, at which
times he had taken charge and she had rendered obedience. And now, with
this last singing of the song, as the lines were cast off and the big
transport began backing slowly out from the dock, she knew that Steve was
something more to her than playfellow.

Five thousand voices were singing "Aloha Oe,"--"_My love be with you till
we meet again_,"--and in that first moment of known love she realized
that she and Steve were being torn apart. When would they ever meet
again? He had taught her those words himself. She remembered listening
as he sang them over and over under the _hau_ tree at Waikiki. Had it
been prophecy? And she ha