confident that Helena had in her the capacity for passion; that the
flowering-time of such a nature would be one of no ordinary intensity.
She would love, and be miserable--and beat herself to pieces--poor,
brilliant Helena!--against her own pain.

What could he do? Might there not be some chance for
himself--_now_--while the situation was still so uncertain and
undeveloped? Helena was still unconscious, unpledged. Why not cut in at
once? "She likes me--she has been a perfect dear to me these last few
times of meeting! Philip backs me. He would take my part. Perhaps, after
all, my fears are nonsense, and she would no more dream of marrying
Philip, than he would dream, under cover of his guardianship, of making
love to her."

He raised himself in the boat, filled with a new inrush of will and
hope, and took up the drifting oars. Across the water, on the white
slopes of lawn, and in some of the windows of the house, lights were
appearing. The electricians were testing the red and blue lamps they had
been stringing among the rose-beds, and from the gabled boathouse on the
further side, a bright shaft from a small searchlight which had been
fixed there, was striking across the water. Geoffrey watched it
wandering over the dark wood on his right, lighting up the tall stems of
the beeches, and sending a tricky gleam or two among the tangled
underwood. It seemed to him a symbol of the sudden illumination of mind
and purpose which had come to him, there, on the shadowed water--and he
turned to look at a window which he knew was Helena's. There were lights
within it, and he pictured Helena at her glass, about to slip into some
bright dress or other, which would make her doubly fair. Meanwhile from
the rose of the sunset, rosy lights were stealing over the water and
faintly glorifying the old house and its spreading gardens. An