Hastings' and Antoinette's claims to
it; and he wondered if he were to love Olivia more for everything
that she did, how he could possibly live long enough to tell her.
When one has been to Yaque the simplest gifts and graces resolve
themselves into this question.
_The Aloha_ gently freed herself from the shallow green pocket where
she had lain through three eventful days, and slipped out toward the
waste of water bound by the flaunting autumn of the west. An island
wind, fragrant of bark and secret berries, blew in puffs from the
steep. A gull swooped to her nest in a cranny of the basalt. From
below a servant came on deck, his broad American face smiling over a
tray of glasses and decanters and tinkling ice. It was all very
tranquil and public and almost commonplace--just the high tropic
seas at the moment of their unrestrained sundown, and the odour of
tea-cakes about the pleasantly-littered deck. And for the moment,
held by a common thought, every one kept silent. Now that _The
Aloha_ was really moving toward home, the affair seemed suddenly
such a gigantic impossibility that every one resented every one
else's knowing what a trick had been played.
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