Harber
felt his heart stir swiftly. He knew what she was feeling, as she
looked out over the shimmering half-moon of harbour, across the
moaning white feather of reef, out to the illimitable sea, and drank
in the essence of the beauty of the night. Just so, at first, had it
clutched him with the pain of ecstasy, and he had never forgotten it.
There would be no voicing that feeling; it must ever remain
inarticulate. Nor was the girl trying to voice it. Her exquisite
pantomime alone spelled her delight in it and her surrender to it.
He saw at a glance that he didn't know her. She was "new" to the
islands. Her clothes were evidence enough for that. There was a
certain verve to them that spoke of a more sophisticated land. She
might have been twenty-five though she seemed younger. She was in
filmy white from slipper to throat, and over her slender shoulders
there drifted a gossamer banner of scarf, fluttering in the soft
trade-wind. Harber was very close to see this, and still she hadn't
observed him.
"Don't let me startle you, please!" he said, as he stepped from the
shadow of the trumpet-flower bush that had hitherto concealed him.
Her arms came down slowly, her chin lowered; her pose, if you will,
melted away.
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