ppens to be in the United States some
time, come and see us?"

"Certainly not," Jeremy Sambrooke answered shortly. "Stephen Knight is a
_hapa-haole_ and you know what that means."

"Oh," Dorothy said faintly, while she felt a numb despair creep into her
heart.

Steve was not a _hapa-haole_--she knew that; but she did not know that a
quarter-strain of tropic sunshine streamed in his veins, and she 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."

Steve was looking up at her with eager eyes, and he saw in her face what
he had not seen before. By the rush of gladness into his own face she
knew that he knew. The air was throbbing with the song--

My love to you.
My love be with you till we meet again.

There was no need