After an evening of ecstasy such as Olwen had lived through upon those iridescent waves, what could the girl expect?
It is one of Fate's harshest rules that in one way or another we pay for our ecstasies. The more golden the moment the more dull and clouded must seem the hours that follow: and that is just because we have seen that magic green shimmer on the breaker's crest that the grey of these smooth waters looks to us so leaden. Ah, better to know the sadness of this than never to have set keel in any but the quiet waters! To have no reckoning to pay because no ecstasy has been ours to enjoy is surely the bitterest price that can be demanded of us.... But Olwen was too young to recognize this.
So, when the next day she emerged bit by bit from her dream, she was sore and resentful to find all life at its flattest.
To begin with (and, indeed, to go on with; for this was the whole leaven of discontent), Captain Ross encountered her as if there had been no magic voyage, no hand clasped in hand, no wildfire, no silent thrills between them. "Ah, good morrrrning, Miss Howel-Jones. Another beautiful day——"
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.