The Professor's head was bent over his work-table. "A couple of days, my dear, I suppose. You can be packed up and all that by then. You are broken in by now, aren't you, to your packing up and getting on without much warning?" But this had taken Olwen without any warning, it appeared. She stood there as if frozen, and said, "Away from here!" and in her heart exclaimed, "Away from _him_!" She stood aghast, an image of all the maids in love who have ever been sentenced to banishment from the presence of the beloved. She had put away from her up to now all thought of such a dreadful thing happening. Simply, she could not have imagined it. Going away from the hotel in the pine forest, while he still was left in it! Going away, before he had ever said to her a word that counted? Going away--with that Charm unproved? [Illustration: She stood there as if frozen, and said: "Away from here!" and in her heart exclaimed: "Away from him!"] * * * * * It was time the Charm required; Olwen was agitatedly certain of that now. Time. It had taken so many days before he had even held her hand; given so many other days, and what might not happen? But she was not to know. Those days were not to be allowed to her. She clenched into her palm the nails of those little fingers that Captain Ross had held in that warmly-caressing clasp. She was to go ... never to see him any more.... She cleared her throat, pulled herself together, and asked, "And after Paris, Uncle, where do we go; London, you said?" Now, this was a gleam of hope; London! For she had once heard Captain Ross, in talking to Mrs. Cartwright, tell the writer that when his sick leave was up and after he had been boarded, he had prospects of an office job in town. If he were in London, and if her Uncle and she were also in London ... well, then the outlook would not be entirely so black. It would not be the every day and several times a day encountering of this French hotel; but there surely might be meetings, if they were together, in London? But the Professor, eyes still upon his papers, said, "London for a week or so, but I'm always glad enough to get out of the place. I shall be going down to Wales, then; I can leave you at your Auntie Margaret's, dear, before I go on to Liverpool. My plans will be unsettled----" "You're not going to have me with you, then Uncle?" "No, Olwen _fach_. For the present, not," he told her above the rustling of the papers. "I shan't require you for the work in hand for the next----Let me see, four or six months, perhaps. You will be able to go home; have a nice rest from work; help your Auntie in the house, see a little bit of your sisters and of your old friends." Olwen felt precisely as if the genial-voiced old man were condemning her to penal servitude for the rest of her natural life. "Uncle!" she exclaimed in horror. It was met by a mildly surprised glance from the old man.