"Come with me now, for always. I will take you away to the groves of Huapu. There we will laugh and dance and sing all the day through, and I will bring you water in a fern-leaf and weave you flower chains and climb to pluck you the rarest fruits, and build a nest to keep you safe. There you shall never be sad any more, or wearied, or lonely—or afraid. Because I will be with you always, always—Hokoolele! Come with me to-night!"...
Then the maiden soul of Miss Matilda was torn like a slender, upright palm in the tropic hurricane, for a lover's arm was about her waist and a lover's importunate breath against her cheek, and these things were happening to her for the first time in her life.
"No—no, Motauri!" She struggled inexpertly, fluttering at his touch, bathed in one swift flush. "My father—!" she gasped.
"What does it matter? Your father shall marry us any way he pleases—afterward. But we will live in Huapu forever!"
And with a sudden dizzied weakening she saw that this was true and that she had treasured the knowledge for this very moment. Her father would marry them. He would marry them as he married Jeremiah's Loo and the shell-buyer—"and only too thankful." Curious that the conventional fact should have pleaded with the night's spiced fragrance, with the bland weight of the island zephyr on her eyelids, with the vibrant contact of young flesh and the answering madness in her veins. Curious, too, that her dread and loathing of the man Gregson should have urged her the same way. But so they did, reason fusing with desire like spray with wind, and all conspiring to loose her from the firm hold of habit and training.
"We can go now—this minute," Motauri was whispering. "There are boats to be had below on the beach. We can reach Huapu before morning. None shall see us go."
"You forget the path—the people—" She could hardly frame the words with her lips.
"And Gregson's lights on the chapel—!"
But Motauri laughed low for love and pride.