Beautiful, indeed.... Olwen felt as if by rights the sun should have gone out and the rains should have come to weep over the lagoon. As a matter of fact the weather remained radiant. Her idol's easy, friendly manner had dealt her a blow that stunned her into a torper of low spirits, and there seemed nobody to give her a helping hand out of it. Mrs. Cartwright, usually so sympathetic and interesting, talked to her (Olwen) as if her thoughts were far, far away: with her serial-people, the girl supposed vexedly, or with those boys of hers at school. Young Mr. Awdas--well, he never talked to Olwen. An apathetic young man, she considered him. All flyers were interesting from their very job--otherwise _how_ uninteresting was Mr. Awdas! Nobody but Mrs. Cartwright (who was so kind), would bother to draw him out, Olwen thought. Then Agatha Walsh--impossible to talk to _her_ today: her Sergeant Gustave Tronchet's leave was up, and he was to depart to join his battery that evening. They could not be married until his next leave. Poor Agatha was paying too for her golden moments. Mr. Brown--well, as for Mr. Brown (who had, after all, done all the work in that boat the night before), Olwen felt that she could have slapped him. Upon Mr. Brown's well-meaning bullet head she felt herself pouring the resentment that she might have reserved for Captain Ross and his forgetfulness, his insensibility. Silly little Mr. Brown! Why on earth couldn't he run away and attract somebody (hadn't Olwen given him a talisman for that very purpose?) instead of hanging about trying to talk to somebody who was already distracted enough as it was, because her own talisman seemed sometimes so potent, sometimes so useless? That it should have allured Mr. Brown into being sentimental about her seemed the last straw! (to Olwen.) But it wasn't. For it was Professor Howel-Jones, it was her Uncle himself who contributed to his niece's burden, on this day of depression, what was really the last straw. It happened as Olwen brought to him, with a little air of triumph, the typed copy and the duplicate of the last section of the last chapter of his book on "Agarics." "So that's finished," she said. "That's finished," agreed the Professor, his brown gaze running over the sheets. "Olwen, I've done well here. This has been an excellent place for work; excellent." He laid the copy down on that chaotic work-table of his, and added, with cheerfulness, "Well! There's nothing to keep us here any longer, now." This Olwen did not take in at once. "Nothing to keep us, Uncle?" "Only the passports to be _visé'd_ and made out for Paris," returned the old man. "I want to stay a night or so in Paris before I go on to London." A great blankness fell upon Olwen's small face. "The passports," she repeated. "Paris!!! You mean you want us to leave quite soon?"