A somewhat mysterious message had come from Bordeaux, asking all three of the British officers then sojourning at Les Pins to go over and spend the day with their comrades-in-arms at a base about which none of these soldiers would answer any questions. They had gone, all three of them; Captain Ross, Mr. Awdas, and little Mr. Brown. They wouldn't be back all day. Not all day would Olwen have a glimpse of him whom presently she might never be seeing at all--and still Mrs. Cartwright affirmed that it would be possible to have a good time! Probably Mrs. Cartwright guessed at the young girl's frame of mind as easily as at the less disguised feelings of Sergeant Tronchet's betrothed; it had not been for long that the writer had wondered "Who that child's so desperately in love with?" But brooding was a thing that Claudia Cartwright considered a wasteful and useless proceeding on the part of any young girl. She determined to put a stop to it, if possible, and that was why she went on gaily, "I often think of how Eve would have got on if she had been made first; probably she'd have thoroughly enjoyed having the whole of that Garden to herself, whereas Adam----! Bored to tears, of course. Not good for man to be alone.... Well, since all the men have gone from here, why shouldn't we have a party of our own?" "A party!" echoed Miss Walsh, lugubriously. "Oh, Mrs. Cartwright!" "Why not? I am sure Sergeant Gustave doesn't want you to shut yourself up because he's gone back to the front; come and see something to put into your lovely long letters to him. And since those other three young men have gone off on a stag party to Bordeaux, we'll organize a dove lunch, as the American girls call it, and go off to Cap Ferret. It's perfectly lovely there. Olwen, where's the Professor? I'm going to beg leave for you. Come along, Miss Walsh----" There was about Mrs. Cartwright that day an almost schoolgirlish flow of vitality that the other two found it impossible to resist; their own being at a low ebb, they let themselves drift with the current of hers. The corners of Miss Walsh's mouth ceased to turn quite so definitely downward, and the clouds in Olwen's bright eyes seemed about to disperse. In half an hour they were all ready, and setting out for this trip to Cap Ferret, which lay beyond the _Baissin_, the dunes, and the lighthouse. In the bright autumn sunlight the little motor-boat buzzed with them across the lagoon that had set such a fairy scene, that night.... But there was a gay wind blowing now, sending the big white clouds rolling across the sky in towering columns like those of the Biscay waves, seen from afar.