"_Half the trouble in the world arises from the fact that human beings are continually falling in love_ ... with the wrong people." She read the astonishing suggestion: "_Each of us knows a list of these stories. How avert them? By seeking out and planting only in the right soil the root of good or evil, the Love-germ._" She read further, this profoundly hopeful comment: "_Have you never heard it said of a woman_, 'She is not pretty, but she has the disturbing charm, whatever it is'?" Finally she read this, the sentence that set her trembling: "_In the small packet enclosed there is sealed up the result of years of Research, with directions for its use._" It lay in her hand, the packet which she had taken up as gingerly as if it had been turpinite, or something else capable of blowing her out through the window and past the long wooden pier, across the sparkling _Baissin_, over the sandhills with their lighthouse and into the Bay of Biscay where those rollers foamed and roared.... The old Scientist had said "Madness!" This girl longed to accept every word of it; partly, perhaps, because every loving woman secretly believes there must be some Power of this kind, could she but find it--the power to compel the love she covets. Here it was. Hastily she broke the wrapping; it disclosed an inner packet and a paper. In small characters there was written on the paper: DIRECTIONS FOR USE. "This charm must be worn, _hidden_, about the person of him or her who wishes to test its efficacy. "It may be hidden about the dress or person of someone who does not know of its properties; its power will work, nevertheless. "A small portion of the charm will suffice. "Constant use does not wear away its power." Olwen, bending closely over the inner packet, sniffed at the pleasant musky scent that rose from it. "_Oh!..._" she breathed.... Were those steps outside the passage?... She sprang up.... Swiftly, almost guiltily, she dragged down the low collar of her frock; she thrust the packet and paper into her bosom. They crackled against the soft mauve ribbons of her underbodice. "Supposing I'd _got_ it!" she thought, and her whole heart lifted. She pressed her hands to her breast. Supposing that under her own small and fevered hands (dimpled, faintly stained from the carbon of her typewriter) she held it, that recipe for setting right the Blunder of the world! Ah, if she'd got hold of it really, the Love-germ, the microbe of mischief and delight! The Disturbing Charm itself! _Then_ what would come of it? CHAPTER II THE ACCEPTING OF THE CHARM "What I can do, can do no hurt to try." Shakespeare. That day, since the Professor chose (as he often did) to give lunch a miss while he wandered and pottered about in the Forest, he sent his niece into _déjeuner_ alone. Her he never allowed to miss a meal; he held that young people must eat plenty and often.