On the brightlit front veranda men in white and in dinner-clothes and women in every hue of evening dress were passing to and fro.

Elderly folk, sitting in deep porch chairs, watched through the long windows the gayly-moving dancers in the ballroom.

Out through wide-open doors and windows pulsed the rhythmic music.
Above hung the great white stars in the blue-black Southern skies.

The bay stretched glimmering and phosphorescent away from the palm-girt hotel gardens.

The trade-winds set the myriad dry palm-fronds to rustling like the downpour of summer rain.
Up the steps from the gardens drifted promenaders and dancers, in groups or in twos and threes.