that the crucial point was past.

"Thank you, John. Good night," was the response.

"Yes, sir, thank you, sir. I think it's going to rain. Good night,
sir."

Out of the clear sky, filled only with stars and moonlight, fell a
rain so fine and attenuated as to resemble a vapour spray. Nobody
minded it; the children played on, running bare-legged over the
grass and leaping into the sand; and in a few minutes it was gone.
In the south-east, Diamond Head, a black blot, sharply defined,
silhouetted its crater-form against the stars. At sleepy intervals
the surf flung its foam across the sands to the grass, and far out
could be seen the black specks of swimmers under the moon. The
voices of the singers, singing a waltz, died away; and in the
silence, from somewhere under the trees, arose the laugh of a woman
that was a love-cry. It startled Percival Ford, and it reminded him
of Dr. Kennedy's phrase. Down by the outrigger canoes, where they
lay hauled out on the sand, he saw men and women, Kanakas, reclining
languorously, like lotus-eaters, the women in white holokus; and
against one such holoku he saw the dark head of the steersman of the
canoe resting upon the woman's shoulder. Farther down, where the
strip of sand widened at the entrance to the lagoon, he saw a man
and woman walking side by side. As they drew near the light lanai,
he saw the woman's hand go down to her waist and disengage a
girdling arm. And as they passed him, Percival Ford nodded to a
captain he knew, and to a major's daughter. Smoke of life, that was
it, an ample phrase. And again, from under the dark algaroba tree
arose the laugh of a woman that was a love-cry; and past his chair,