Geoffrey was gazing at her with alarm.  Was she going mad?  The girl jumped up and laid her little hands on his shoulder.

“There, big captain,” she cried, “don’t be frightened.  That is only one of Reggie’s piano tunes.  I never heard tunes like his before.  He plays them, and then explains to me what each note means; and then he plays the tune again, and I can see the whole story.  That is why I love him—­sometimes!”

“Then you do love him?” Geoffrey was clutching pathetically for anything which he could understand or appeal to in this elusive person.

“I love him,” said Yae, pirouetting on her white toes near the edge of the chasm, “and I love you and I love any man who is worth loving!”

They returned to the lake in silence.  Geoffrey’s sermon was abortive.  This girl was altogether outside the circle of his code of Good Form.  He might as well preach vegetarianism to a leopard.  Yet she fascinated him, as she fascinated all men who were not as dry as Aubrey Laking.  She was so pretty, so frail and so fearless.  Life had not given her a fair chance; and she appealed to the chivalrous instinct in men, as well as to their less creditable passions.  She was such a butterfly creature; and the flaring lamps of life had such a fatal attraction for her.

The wind was blowing straight against the harbour.  The bay of Sh[=o]bu-ga-Hama was shallow water.  Try as he might, Geoffrey could not manoeuvre the little yacht into the open waters of the lake.

“We are on a lee-shore,” said Geoffrey.

At the end he had to get down and wade bare-legged, towing the boat after him until at last Yae announced that the centreboard had been lowered and that the boat was answering to the helm.

Geoffrey clambered in dripping.  He shook himself like a big dog after a swim.

“Reggie could never have done that,” said Yae, with fervent admiration.  “He would be afraid of catching cold.”

* * * * *

At last they reached the steps of the villa.  They were both hungry.

“I am going to stop to lunch, big captain,” said Yae, “Reggie won’t be back.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I saw Gwendolen Cairns listening last evening when he spoke to me through the big trumpet.  She tells Lady Cynthia, and that means a lot of work next day for poor Reggie, so that he can’t spend his time with me.  You see!  Oh, how I hate women!”

After lunch, at Chuzenji, all the world goes to sleep.  It awakes at about four o’clock, when the white sails come gliding out of the green bays like swans.  They greet, or avoid.  They run side by side for the length of a puff of breeze.  They coquet with one another like butterflies; or they head for one of those hidden beaches which are the principal charm of the lake, where baskets are unpacked and cakes and sandwiches appear, where dry sticks are gathered for a rustic fire, and after an hour or more of anxious stoking the kettle boils.