Angel Island

Above him, almost within reach, Lulu floated, gazing downward. She had a

listening look; and she listened fascinated. She seemed to lie

motionless on the air. It was the first time that Merrill had seen Lulu

so close. But in some mysterious way he knew that there was something

abnormal about her. Her piquant Kanaka face shone with a strange

emotion. Her narrow eyes were big with wonder; her blood-red lips had

trembled open. She stared at Honey as if she were seeing him from a new

angle. She stared, but sound came from her parted lips.

It was Honey who whistled and called. It was Lulu who twittered and

trilled. No mating male bird could have put more of entreating

tenderness into his voice. No mating female bird could have answered

with more perplexity of abandon.

For a moment Frank stared. Then, with a sudden sense of eavesdropping,

he moved noiselessly back until he struck the main trail.

He kept on until he came to the shady side of his favorite reef. He took

from his pocket a book and began to read. To his surprise and

discomfort, he could not get into it. Something psychological kept

coming between him and the printed page. He tried to concentrate on a

paragraph, a sentence, a phrase. It was like eating granite. It was like

drinking dust. He stared at the words, but they seemed to float off the

page.

That, then, was what all the other four men were doing while he was

reading and writing, or while, with narrowed, scrutinizing eyes, he

followed Chiquita's languid flight. He had not seen Chiquita for a week;

he had been so busy getting the first part of his monograph into shape

that he had not come to the reef. And all that week, the other men had

been -. A word from the university slang came into his mind - twosing -

came into it with a new significance. How descriptive that word was! How

concrete! Twosing!

He took up his book again. He glued his eyes to the print. Five minutes

passed; he was gazing at the same words. But now instead of floating off

the page, they engaged in little dances, dizzyingly concentric. Suddenly

something that was not of the mind interposed another obstacle to

concentration, a jagged, purple shadow.

It was Chiquita.

Frank leaped to his feet and stood staring. The quickness of his

movement - ordinarily he moved measuredly - frightened her. She

fluttered, drifted away, paused. Frank stiffened. His immobility

reassured her. She drifted nearer. Something impelled Frank to hold his

rigid pose. But, for some unaccustomed reason, his hand trembled. His

book dropped noiselessly on to the soft grass.