"Yes, indeed," agreed the demure Olwen, feeling as if she exchanged a mental glance with the unknown Inventor of that Charm. "It will be worth it." CHAPTER IV THE CHARM BEGINS TO WORK "Bescheidenheit ist eine Zier', Doch weiter kommt man ohne ihr." Boche Proverbs. "No woman can get me to call her pretty," enunciated Captain Ross, "until I've seen her walk." The fiat, delivered in that ice-ax voice of his, cut through the polyglot murmur of the visitors gathered in the shining bare salon, all mirrors and decorations of artificial iris. The voice continued to hold forth. "Feet first; then figure. That's how it comes with me. Then hair. Fairrrr hairrr. Must be fair-to-golden. A woman who isn't bland"--this is how he pronounced it, but his hearers assumed it to mean blonde--"a woman who isn't bland is only half a woman to me." This saying was given out on the evening of the day when the Charm had fallen into the hands of Olwen Howel-Jones. She was sitting there at the time, on a red plush sofa next to her Uncle, at the edge of the group formed by Mrs. Cartwright (who wore a tawny-golden tea-gown and was knitting a khaki sock), Mr. Awdas, the young flying officer who looked so appropriately like an eagle with his bold features and the head that was so narrow in comparison with his wide, wing-like shoulders, and Captain Ross, the one-armed Staff Captain, who was discoursing to them on the subject of Women, of whom (as he had been known to remark) he was the finest judge in Europe. Olwen's little jet-black head was buried in the current number of "Femina," which she had picked up from the oval, crimson-covered table in front of her, but she was devouring every word of the homily on Women. That Captain Ross should notice a girl's feet was glad news; her own feet being not merely tiny, but of a gratifying shapeliness. But her heart seemed to sink suddenly down into the slippers that shod them, when she heard the further "demmannd" that Beauty must be fair-haired. Ah, he would never look at _her_, then! She never, apparently, looked at him. For, regarding this one man for whom she would have given her eyes, the artless Welsh maiden had learnt Mrs. Cartwright's art of seeing without seeming to do so. What she seemed to see were those glazed full-page French fashion-plates. What she did see were every look and turn of the man at two arms-lengths from her, lounging in the red plush chair with its ornate écru mats. What she saw can be seen by each girl in love; "the Heart-wish Incarnate," a glamorous, radiant creature indeed! And----What was really _there_? Let us borrow the eyes of the others, who were not in Love with this Captain Ross, to describe him. Young Awdas, the flyer, would have told you, "_A top-hole fellow. Bucks rather; but you get used to it. Capital chap._"