"I guess I'm about as fine a judge of women as a baby is a judge of mothers," he told her, frankly and ruefully. "One he knows; his own. And herrrr he's got to have!" But she put it aside. _This_ wasn't enough of a proposal! She harked back to that party at Mrs. Cartwright's which had witnessed the last losing fight of this prisoner of hers, taken now with horse, foot and guns. "'What's Love? An amusement,'" she quoted, mischievously, his words upon that occasion. "That's what you said, four--no! only three days ago," she insisted, now feeling that she had got well into her stride and could keep this well-merited strafing of the young man for an hour yet. "Yes! Just to be horrid to _me_! How you talked! All about how bored a man got 'when some woman started in to Love' him----" Here Olwen stopped, abruptly but too late. She coloured to the deep pink of the little coral brooch at her throat. She saw what she'd said. So did he. Very quickly the soldier took advantage of this break in the line of her defence. "Ah!" His voice lifted. "Well, what of that? What has _that_ got to do with my being 'horrid' to you? What----connection is there between you, and any woman starting in to love _me_?" "Oh, _none_! I didn't mean _that_," Olwen assured him, laughing flippantly, but dropping her eyes to gaze so hard at the carpet that only the top of the head was to be seen. Glossily black and shapely enough was the little head upon which Captain Ross had heaped, in his mind, every anathema as well as every endearment that he knew, but he was dashed if he was expected to read what she meant out of the mere top of it. So---- If, a month ago, some one had informed Captain Ross of the Honeycomb that he would ever be reduced for any possible reason, to go down on his knees on the floor at a woman's feet, he would not have considered the idiotic prophecy was worth a laugh. But his number was up. Here he found himself kneeling on the carpet at Olwen's feet just because there seemed no other way at that moment of getting a really satisfactory glimpse of Olwen's face. "Now! my lady," he began, firmly. But just as he'd thought he meet her eyes squarely she turned her head sidewards and directed that bright gaze of hers, as she'd often done before, over his shoulder and away. She was ready to glance at the blaze of the log fire, at the wall-paper, at the oval china frame all garlands and Loves of the standing mirror, at the large portrait of Professor Howel-Jones in his robes, at anything, yes! anything rather than at the (late) finest judge of women in Europe, at her feet. It was too much. The pent-up, exasperated longing of months broke out in six words. "Look at me, you little demon! _look_ at me----" But even now she did not look; how could she, when she had shut her eyes before the change that had come into his own?