We found a small canoe; Brett sculled it with a broad-bladed paddle. Other boats were around us. A long canoe with a dozen sweeping paddles shot by us with the racing strokes of its men, and with shouts from its laughing girls. Another, smaller, turned over. Its men swam, and righted it. They climbed aboard, hauling up the girls. The wet draperies clung to them; they came up like dripping, gleeful water-sprites, tossing their black hair. . . . A barge went slowly along, drawn by two canoes. A lighted canopy was over its occupants--a huge, woven garland of flowers. The canopy gleamed with spots of vivid-colored lights. "The luminous flowers," said Brett. And I saw that the large purple blossoms were gleaming with a purple light--a phosphorescence inherent in them; and red blossoms, like crimson lanterns; and others orange, and green. Music floated upward from the barge, soft and sweet over the water. The tinkle of strings--the voices of girls singing, and men humming with a deeper background of harmony. . . . A night for love-making. The night romantic. Brett's wedding night--and yet, he had sighed. I knew why, for upon my own heart lay a weight of apprehension, heavier because it was so incongruous. Martt quite evidently did not feel it--he was shouting and laughing constantly with his pleasure. A girl from a neighboring boat tossed him a large, blood-red, glowing blossom. It fell short, went into the water and slowly sank, staining the water with its red light. Martt all but turned us over trying to rescue it. Frannie, too, seemed gay. I tried to smile; but I felt that it was forced. The depression upon me would not be shaken off. It grew to seem almost sinister. The very atmosphere of happiness around me seemed to intensify it. These merrymakers--in the midst of life. . . . At such a moment as this, death could choose to strike. . . . "Look!" shouted Martt. "The lights off there--is that where we're going?" A patch of gay-colored lights gleamed from over the water ahead. "Yes," said Brett. "An island there, where they hold the festival. It's not far." It was an irregular circular island, a mile perhaps in extent. The lake waters indented it with a hundred tiny bays, inlets, and narrow, placid waterways. We ascended one of them. The surface of the island was gently undulating, and wooded, with mossy dells--nooks arched with the luminous flowers. Nooks for love-making. The whole island was strewn thick with the flowers; they grew upon tall, single stems--gay-colored lanterns nodding in the breeze. Beneath them were laughing couples; some hidden, sought and found by groups of marauding girls, to seize the man and laughingly whisk him away. And everywhere was music, soft as an echo. . . . * * * * *