"The Disturbing Charm!" ... Ah, he knew it! _She_ had possessed it, the girl he had never married, the girl who had passed him over for his brother the sea-captain, and who had become the mother of Olwen, his niece. Olwen would be coming in a few minutes to straighten and sort all those drifts of paper on the roomy work-table which no hand but hers, in the whole of the hotel, was allowed to touch. He thought, half-amusedly: "Better not let that little Olwen get hold of this letter." The letter ended: "_Sir, you shall not be worried with technicalities. Believe only this, that the life study of the writer of this letter has at last been crowned with success. In the small packet enclosed there is sealed up the result of years of Research, with directions for its use. The inventor lacks courage for experimenting. But you, learned Sir, you, the gifted author of 'The Loves of the Ferns,' will not shrink from responsibility in the cause of Science._ "_Should you wish to procure more of the invention, there is enclosed the address of a box at a newspaper office where you may apply._ "_With all good wishes from_ "_Your obedient servant_, "_The Inventor._" A deep genial laugh broke from the old man's wide chest. He threw the letter and its enclosure on to the table, on the top of his notes for the chapter on "Edible Fungi." "Mad--sentimental mad!" he commented. "Most lunatics think themselves inventors, that's why most inventors are considered lunatics." He drew up a chair and began making hay of the papers before him, in search of the other file of notes. The large room which the Professor had had cleared of the bed and most of the other furniture was full of air and sunshine and of that polished cleanliness which few English rooms achieve. White walls and parquet floor shone like mirrors, mirrors like diamonds; the glass of the open windows was clear as the morning air that lay between the hotel and the pine-forest on the one side, the lagoon on the other. The resinous sigh of the pines mingled with the warm, lung-lifting breath of the sea. It was a glorious morning--too glorious for work indoors.... Professor Howel-Jones looked hard at his notes, but for once he scarcely saw them. He knew that the letter he had just read was the work of a sentimental lunatic, but for all that it had set a string vibrating. As the old man sat there, his brown eyes abstracted under the thatch of hair as white as seeding clematis, he looked like some clean-shaven modern Druid seeing visions. He did, at that moment, see a vision. * * * * * He saw an endless procession of those people who have loved or married (or both) the wrong person. He saw the lads who have chosen out of their class; barmaids, "bits of fluff." He saw the girls who have married out of their generation.