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——"