Dolan of Sugar Hills by Kate Starr Page A

heart, never the same. Not any island could be that again.
    At noon the boat stopped at a little bay.
    “This is an excellent place for live coral viewing,” Cane Dolan, who had appeared at last, informed Sheila. “ The Star makes it a practice here to take the guests out to view the reef through a glass-bottomed boat.”
    The little dinghy carried six people. It was rowed to a likely spot and then the oarsman let it drift slowly back and forth.
    Sheila bent over and peered through the glass, seeing once more the cool green world through which she had wreathed yesterday. The reef proved, as Cane had said, an excellent spot for viewing. There were coral tiers like Buddhist temples, coral grottos, coral caves, blue staghorn coral edged with rosy pink, coral limitless in shape and hue.
    Rowing back to The Star, she remembered suddenly her own coral. She had put it away for safety behind a special rock on the beach. It was still there.
    She told Cane as soon as she came aboard.
    “Sorry we can’t go back for it,” he shrugged carelessly. “Anyway, if you had fetched it along, probably, with all our moving, like the heart the Mandalay man compared it to, it would break.”
    “It hasn’t broken, it’s been left behind,” she murmured a little dully.
    “The heart?” he queried, but he did not wait for her answer, he went up to the bridge.
    They stopped that night off Molle Island, and the guests went ashore to see the aquatic museum and zoo. Sheila went with them and later stood watching the young people dance.
    She did not know Cane had come ashore too, until he came up behind her. Perhaps, as at the cane dance, he did bow and ask her ... just as on that occasion Sheila could not now have said. She only knew that for a second time she moved in rhythm to music and to his steps.
    Once she dared to look up to meet the charcoal-dark eyes only a few inches away. Cane, she found she wanted to cry out, what is it, what ’ s wrong, what is it standing between us, what is it all about?
    She felt his arms tighten instinctively around her, she heard him say, “Sheila...”
    Then all at once she was remembering the night of the other dance ... Molly reminding him warningly, “You had no right to ask her as you did.”
    Suddenly she wanted to run away.
    Cane must have felt her withdrawal. His hands dropped from her waist to his sides.
    “It’s too hot for dancing,” he said, and lit a cigarette.
    They were circling Pentecost Island the next morning, and Sheila—at the skipper’s invitation and assisted by Cane—was at the wheel, when Mrs. Edwards arrived with tea.
    She sat and drank hers, too. Conversationally she said to Cane, “Your two girls didn’t stop long on Silverwake, Mr. Dolan.”
    The effect was instant. Cane whirled around.
    “What girls?”
    Mrs. Edwards obviously was startled. “Why, the maids you took across.”
    “You mean they’ve gone?”
    “A week ago.”
    “You mean—” Cane’s voice was quite thick now “—that the women are by themselves?”
    “There’s the handyman,” Mrs. Edwards said.
    She might just as well not have spoken. Cane turned to Captain McAllister. “I want a word with you, skip.”
    “Certainly, Cane.” The captain looked at the hostess.
    “Take Miss Guthrie with you, too,” Cane called.
    Sheila went below with the older woman, as obviously puzzled as she was. Neither discussed the matter, however. Mrs. Edwards went to attend her guests, Sheila found a warm corner and turned the pages of a book, but could not have repeated one word of what she read.
    She became quite aware abruptly that the little ship was turning course. It made a steep banking turn, much to the younger passengers’ delight, then set straight across Whit Sunday Passage.
    Sheila closed the book to watch the swishing water. They were cutting the wind, and though there was no actual sting there she found her cotton sweater insufficient warmth. She put the book back in the library and went down for her