"What's the matter, small lass? Aren't you glad to be seeing your home again?" "No," blurted out Olwen. "I don't want to go. Oh, I don't. Uncle! I'd rather be with you. Much. But if you can't have me, I--I--I won't go back----" She put up her little head, shaking it violently as if in the face of a vision of the home in which she'd been brought up. Comfortable, old-fashioned, rambling place that it was, set in wild beauty, and echoing with gay voices, it repelled her; it seemed to her a prison from which there would be no further escaping towards the Heart's Desire. At work as her Uncle's secretary, there still seemed chances of movement in her life, there still seemed possibilities.... But as a girl at home, she felt she would be chained and bound by a thousand chances against. She told herself rebelliously, "Down there, I should never see him again! I won't go!" Unconsciously her hands clasped themselves upon her breast, upon that slender talisman that she was wearing. The old man regarded her, at a loss why the child should be agitated, she who had always seemed happy enough with her sisters at home. "But, Olwen _fach_, if you don't go back, what do you want to do?" "I want to stay on in London, Uncle!" "In London--dear me--curious taste! Why? What could you do there?" "I could do War work, like lots and lots--like every other girl!" "Tut," retorted the Professor. Being a Welshman, he pronounced this word to rhyme with "foot." Being a man of his generation, he still disliked to think of any girl at work except domestically or for him. "What d'you want to do that for, Olwen _fach_?" To this question Olwen could hardly answer with the whole truth. How many girls insist upon working in London because there, also, is working their particular Captain Ross? Olwen's mind was set upon a plan. She would think out the "hows" as soon as she left this place. Only a couple more days in which the Charm might work for her, here! CHAPTER XV THE LOSING OF THE CHARM "Farewell, thou latter Spring! Farewell, All-hallown summer!" Shakespeare. "It's perfectly easy to have a good time in this world without any men," declared Mrs. Cartwright, smiling. "In fact, as easy as it is with them. In many ways, easier!" Her listeners looked at her without conviction. For they were Miss Walsh and Olwen Howel-Jones. Poor Miss Walsh, having passed thirty-four years of her life in a manless world, having been then caught up into a Paradise for two, and, further, having been banished from it again with the departure of her Gustave, felt that nothing could be more untrue than this remark of the writer's. As for Olwen--well, this was on the morning after her Uncle had sprung upon her the news that all _her_ "good time" was to end in two days' time. And one whole precious day of that remaining two was to be wasted; _wasted_!