and the poise of the small head and the grace of the slender body. At the same time he was inwardly praying that she would quickly go down the stairway or back to her corner, so that he might at least shift his position enough to turn his head in another direction before she saw him. He was sure that she must soon discover him if she remained, for she was so near that the long locks of his tree actually swept the edge of the roof, though the branches were too slender for him to venture away from the trunk itself. Still, those long locks kept up a constant swaying,—perhaps she would not notice.
However, the girl seemed to be in no haste whatever; but instead came forward to within a few feet of where he was clinging, and stood looking off and up at the higher mountains and watching the thrashing of the trees as the blasts of wind came tearing down, and held forth her arms again in a sort of ecstacy as each blast enwrapped her and fluttered her hair and her one garment. Her eyes were shining and the warm color showed in her cheeks as she stood drinking in the early morning vitality. And then her body began to sway gently and her arms and hands to take on the soft, relaxed, weaving motions of the hula. And there, as the sun came up over the ridge, she greeted it with her dance and the soft, plaintive chant of a Hawaiian mele.
And the unwilling observer so close at hand
