It was after dinner. The broad veranda was filled with gayly
gowned women; uniformed officers from the fort; tourists in white. They
were drinking their after-dinner coffee, smoking, laughing. The Hawaiian
orchestra made ready to play for the dancing on the veranda. They began
to play. Their ukeleles throbbed and moaned. The musicians sang in their
rich, melodious voices some native song of a lost empire and a dead
king. It tore at your heart. You ached with the savage beauty of it. It
was then she saw him. He was seated alone, smoking, drinking, watching
the crowd with amused, uneager glance. She had seen him before. It was a
certainty, this feeling. She had known him--seen him--before. Perhaps
not in this life. Perhaps only in her dreams. But they had met.

She stared at him until her eye caught his. It was brazen, but she was
shameless. Nothing mattered. This was no time for false modesty. Her
eyes held his. Then, slowly, she rose, picked up her trailing scarf, and
walked deliberately past him, glancing down at him as she passed. He
half rose, half spoke. She went down the steps leading from the veranda
to the court-yard, down this walk to the pier, down the pier to the very
end, where the little roofed shelter lay out in the ocean, bathed in
moonlight, fairylike, unreal. The ocean was a thing of molten silver.
The sound of the wailing voices in song came to her on the breeze,
agonizing in its beauty. There, beyond, lay Pearl Harbour. From the
other side, faintly, you heard the music and laughter from the Yacht
Club.

Maxine seated herself. The after-dinner couples had not yet strolled
out. They were waiting for the dancing up there on the hotel veranda.
She waited. She waited. She saw the glow of his cigar as he came down
the pier, a tall, slim white figure in the moonlight. It was just like a
novel. It was a novel, come to life. He stood a moment at the pier's
edge, smoking. Then he tossed his cigar into the water and it fell with
a little s-st! He stood another moment, irresolutely. Then he came over
to her.

"Nice night."

In Okoochee you would have said, "Sir!" But not here. Not now. Not
Maxine Pardieu. "Yes, isn't it!"

The mellow moon fell full on him--bronzed, bearded, strangely familiar.

At his next question she felt a little faint. "Haven't we--met before?"

She toyed with the end of her scarf. "You feel that, too?"

He nodded. He took a cigarette from a flat platinum case. "Mind if I
smoke? Perha