"Well, then, Miss Olwen----well, then, there we were; engaged! Or practically then," amended little Mr. Brown, his pink face deepening in hue. "It was hours after that that I began to grasp how little it mattered about my not having anything but debts to ask any girl to marry me on; why, great Scott, d'you know who she is? Her Uncle, her hubby's father, is old Jack Robinson of Robinson and Mott; he's got the biggest aeroplane-body business in the Midlands, and he, this Jim of hers----well, she's got all he was to have. He arranged it so. She was to marry again if she liked, and whom she liked. And----Well, she's a girl who might have her pick; apart from the money. Then there's all her money as well; and yet----yet----" He paused for words just as the band at the other end of the tea-room got the upper hand of the buzz of talk and sent a lilt of insistent melody through the air above the parties. "_Fancy you fancying me_" was the tune. "Fancy you fancying me, I can fancy anybody fancying you, But fancy you fancying me." "Incidental music; jolly appropriate," laughed little Mr. Brown, happily. "What that girl could possibly see in your humble beats me. I expect most people who meet us thinks she's balmy----" But Olwen, smiling and interested and sympathetically murmuring, was thinking again (secretly) of the Charm. CHAPTER VIII RATIONS AND THE CHARM "A dinner of herbs where Love is." Proverbs. "If there is one thing that bores a man," gave out Captain Ross, in a voice like the clashing together of Tube lift-gates--a tone that he had adopted all that evening, since nothing seemed to be going right, "if there is one thing that bores a man stiff, it's when some woman starts in to '_Love_' him." He paused to glance across the table at Olwen, gaily chattering with Mr. Ellerton. "It don't matter what woman," pursued the young Staff-officer inexorably. "_Any_ woman. If he's keen before, that chokes him dead off. He's not out for any of this Love-with-a-capital-L business that women are such nuts on. Once he's done the chasing, he's gotten all he wants out of it, I guess. Man's a hunter, Mrs. Cartwright." "I know," cooed his hostess. Inwardly she exclaimed, "Dear Ass!... But is he going on like this for the whole of my party?" Up to then Captain Ross had only spoken to her and to the other young Scotsman whom he had brought with him. At Olwen he had simply glowered. At Miss van Huysen on the other side he had not looked. "What's Love?" he continued, still to Mrs. Cartwright. "It's an amusement. That's what it ought to be. An Episode. It's the Women who insist on spoiling it; taking it seriously. Nothing in this world is worth taking seriously; barring a man's job.... What's woman? The Plaything of Man. And what's Marriage?" It was, as he pronounced it, a word of one syllable.