Here Mr. Brown stopped to draw a breath, to finish his cooling tea, and to offer a cigarette to Olwen, listening with all her ears. There is no audience to a love-story so intent and so satisfactory as the girl to whom one has been attracted. Curiosity as to her supplanter burns in the breast of the woman whether or no she had been attracted to the man; curiosity made of varied elements--sympathy is one, and competition is one, and the undying yearning to compare notes is another.... Little Mr. Brown went on. "Well, it was a pretty room, full of sun in the morning. Pretty coloured curtains and cushions about; and lots of flowers and that yellow bobbly thingummybob scented stuff--mimosa. And then.... Her in the middle of it all----_all different...._ "I stopped dead and stared at her, never even saying good morning. Miss Olwen, I can tell you it was a shock to me. "Last night, you see, I'd left her looking like a saucy little tomboy in that khaki working kit of hers with a cap the same as my own on her head and a black-and-white badge of the R. F. C. on her shoulder, and those brown riding bags.... "This morning here she stood all in a dead-black frock, with a widow's hat on and a long black veil streaming away from her little face. "I stared, I tell you. I saw the situation absobloominglutely changed, in one. "'Good Lord,' I said, 'you've been married?' "She opened her eyes at me and said, 'Why shouldn't I?' "I looked at her, such a little woman in her girl's clothes, but taller than she seemed in t'other rig-out, and I said, 'I didn't know you were married. I thought you were a kid of a girl. A widow. You didn't tell me.' "'You didn't ask me,' she says. 'You might have seen I wore a wedding-ring. Men never do seem to notice rings--or anything else, I can't think why.' "I stood there like a silly ass and said, 'I never thought of you being married. I s'pose I only looked at your face----' "And I suppose I'd been magging so hard all yesterday about myself that I hadn't given the girl a chance to put her life history across me! "She told me then, all quickly as I stood there, that she'd been married last year to her cousin, just before he went out. He was in the Flying Corps. He crashed in France just three months after they'd been married. Then she joined this Women's Legion. (You know they're jolly particular who they let into it, Miss Olwen: have to have no end of refs. from _padres_ and lawyers and people.) She threw herself into her job.... She'd been working like a nigger ever since.... "All I could think to say was 'Well, this knocks me out.' "She laughed and asked me why it should make any difference, her being Mrs. Robinson instead of Miss? She asked me if I didn't like her in those things she'd got on? She said, 'Most people think it's rather becoming, all this black.'