"Shall I? Shall I?... Supposing I tried the effect of the Charm upon somebody else, first? Somebody here? There are at least two people besides myself in this hotel whom it could help...." Then she thought defiantly, "The inventor said he shirked responsibility. Well, _I_ wouldn't! If it doesn't do any good--well! There's no _harm_ done! I----" Another second's pause. Then the decision. "I will. Yes! I _will_ try it!" Half believing, half longing to believe, and wholly excited by the thing, the girl began busying herself as if in answer to some mysterious Command. She opened a drawer of her toilette-table, taking out a square work-basket in which reels, scissors, thimble, and darning skeins were packed into the smallest possible compass; Olwen being as neat in her habits as her uncle was chaotic. From another corner of the drawer she took a carefully rolled-up length of the mauve satin ribbon she used for slotting through her underclothes. From this she cut enough to sew up into a tiny sachet. Then she sat by the window and stitched, the young Welsh girl into whose busy, dimpled hands there had fallen this maybe tremendous Power. While the autumn sun glowed redly on the bodies of those pines without, while the border of far-off Biscay rollers tossed their cloud-like columns of white against the sky-line, she sat at her needle like a Fate with a face of a grave-eyed child, the mouth of a flower. In a few minutes she had the square of satin ready for filling. She drew the packet from her bosom; opened it with a hundred precautions; poured into the sachet a little--a very little!--of the musky scented powder. The packet itself she bestowed at the bottom of her work-basket, locking that carefully away. Yes; some of that was for _her_ to wear again, but not now. Later on. The curious fact persisted that she would wish to see first the effect of that Charm upon another wearer. She had stitched up the sachet before she had answered her own question, "Whom shall I give it to first?" CHAPTER III THE LAUNCHING OF THE CHARM "A field untilled, a web unwove, A flower withheld from sun or bee, An alien in the courts of Love----" Kipling. Accident decided it for her. As she was running down the broad red and white steps at the front of the hotel, Olwen met, coming up, the woman whom Mrs. Cartwright had noticed at lunch for her hopeless well-off spinsterishness. The Spinster carried a guide book, a flowering-plant in a pot with paper round it, and a bound map. She wore over those expensive tweeds of hers those furs which none but the young and radiant should venture to wear; grey squirrel. Her face was blank. It lighted into a tentative smile as the young girl turned and ran back a few steps to the top, waiting for her. "Good afternoon; we mustn't cross on the stairs," Olwen called. "It's unlucky!"