for speech to tell their story. About her, passengers
were flinging their garlands to their friends on the dock. Steve held up
his hands and his eyes pleaded. She slipped her own garland over her
head, but it had become entangled in the string of Oriental pearls that
Mervin, an elderly sugar king, had placed around her neck when he drove
her and her father down to the steamer.

She fought with the pearls that clung to the flowers. The transport was
moving steadily on. Steve was already beneath her. This was the moment.
The next moment and he would be past. She sobbed, and Jeremy Sambrooke
glanced at her inquiringly.

"Dorothy!" he cried sharply.

She deliberately snapped the string, and, amid a shower of pearls, the
flowers fell to the waiting lover. She gazed at him until the tears
blinded her and she buried her face on the shoulder of Jeremy Sambrooke,
who forgot his beloved statistics in wonderment at girl babies that
insisted on growing up. The crowd sang on, the song growing fainter in
the distance, but still melting with the sensuous love-languor of Hawaii,
the words biting into her heart like acid because of their untruth.

Aloha oe, Aloha oe, e ke onaona no ho ika lipo,
A fond embrace, ahoi ae au, until we meet again.

CHUN AH CHUN

There was nothing striking in the appearance of Chun Ah Chun. He was
rather undersized, as Chinese go, and the Chinese narrow shoulders and
spareness of flesh were his. The average tourist, casually glimpsing him
on the streets of Honolulu, would have concluded that he was a
good-natured little Chinese, probably the proprietor of a prosperous
laundry or tailorshop. In so far as good nature and prosperity went, the
judgment would be correct, though beneath the mark; for Ah Chun was as
good-natured as he was prosperous, and of the latter no man knew a tithe
the tale. It was well known that he was enormously wealthy, but in his
case "enormous" was merely the symbol for the unknown.

Ah Chun had shrewd little eyes, black and beady and so very little that
they were like gimlet-holes. But they were wide apart, and they
sheltered under a forehead that was patently the forehead of a thinker.
For Ah Chun had his problems, and had had them all his life. Not that he
ever worried over them. He was essentially a philosopher, and whether as
coolie, or multi-millionaire and master of many men, his poise of soul
was the same. He lived always in the high equanim