As for Helen, I found it easy to forgive, and I grew eloquently defensive whenever my heart accused her. Her moods were as changing as those of the lake, and, like it, knew swift-gathering, passionate storms. Helen of the stars was not Helen of the vivid sunlight. The mystery of night vanished in her zest for the day, and I felt that her spirit strove against mine in all our contests with paddle and racquet, or in our long gallops into the heart of the sunset. She had fashioned for the night a dream-world in which she moved like a whimsical shadow, but by day the fire of the sun flashed in her blood. We established between ourselves a comradeship that was for me delightfully perilous, but which--so she intimated one day, as though in warning--was only an armed neutrality. We were playing tennis in the Glenarm court at the time, and she smashed the ball back to me viciously. "Your serve," she said. And thus, with the joy of June filling the world, the enchanted days sped by. CHAPTER XI THE CARNIVAL OF CANOES Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake. --_Emerson_. I had dined alone and was lounging about the grounds when I heard voices near the Glenarm wall. There was no formal walk there, and my steps were silenced by the turf. The heavy scent of flowers from within gave me a hint of my whereabouts; there was, I remembered, at this point on the school lawn a rustic bench embowered in honeysuckle, and Miss Pat and Helen were, I surmised, taking their coffee there. I started away, thinking to enter by the gate and join them, when Helen's voice rose angrily--there was no mistaking it, and she said in a tone that rang oddly on my ears: "But you are unkind to him! You are unjust! It is not fair to blame father for his ill-fortune." "That is true, Helen; but it is not your father's ill-fortune that I hold against him. All I ask of him is to be sane, reasonable, to change his manner of life, and to come to me in a spirit of fairness." "But he is proud, just as you are; and Uncle Arthur ruined him! It was not father, but Uncle Arthur, who brought all these hideous things upon us." I passed rapidly on, and resumed my walk elsewhere. It was a sad business, the shadowy father; the criminal uncle, who had, as Helen said, brought ruin upon them all; the sweet, motherly, older sister, driven in desperation to hide; and, not less melancholy, this beautiful girl, the pathos of whose position had struck me increasingly. Perhaps Miss Pat was too severe, and I half accused her of I know not what crimes of rapacity and greed for withholding her brother's money; then I set my teeth hard into my pipe as my slumbering loyalty to Miss Pat warmed in my heart again. "It's the night of the carnival, sir," Ijima reminded me, seeking me at the water-tower.