"Ah!"
Her exclamation was a cry of the joy of youth. She stood facing the
coming day, and the sea and sun; and a puff of morning breeze flung
behind her a vagrant strand of golden hair.
She was quite tall, and upon her young figure, long of waist and lithe,
yet well-rounded, the thin white dress of the subtropics was but a
filament, a feminine accessory to the virgin beauty and the message of
her budding womanhood.
Payne heard a soft, heavy step at his back and saw that Higgins, too,
had answered the call of dawn.
The girl stood entranced by the spectacle before her. She placed her
hands upon her bosom and stood with uplifted visage, like a young
goddess of the dawn. She stretched her arms passionately out over the
sea and said quite loudly and fervently:
"I love you, I love you!"
In the shadow of the palm Payne and Higgins began to retreat guiltily.
"No use your sticking round, Payne," whispered the engineer. "You're
too late; she's took. You heard what she said."
"Sh-h!"
"I love you," repeated the girl with the same ecstatic tone and pose.
"Ah! How I love you!"
From the arch over the path there dropped with a swish and crash the
ten-foot branch of a coco palm, falling without warning or apparent
reason, as the overripe branches of coco palms do fall.
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