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.
"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!