To do something for other people; that was the wish that filled the child's heart in its overflowing mood.
Throwing a look to her hair and eyes in the glass, she thought of the woman whom Mrs. Cartwright had classified so promptly as the Hotel Spinster. She thought of that woman's meaningless but "good" clothes, of the hungry eyes which she fastened upon that little French boy seated at table with his mother. How the Spinster had watched that mother bending over her child, turning his chair, showing him how to hold his little silver spoon shaped like a wine-taster, folding his napkin for him; ah, how she'd watched!
"Poor, poor thing!" thought the soft-hearted Olwen. "Anyone could see how she would love a little child of her own——"
And then she thought of the other rather "out of it" guest at that hotel; the very young New Army subaltern whom Mrs. Cartwright had said was living a life to which he hadn't been brought up and which he must leave again unless he could find a rich wife. Not an attractive type, thought Olwen (forgetting that for her at the moment there existed only one masculine type that showed any attraction whatsoever). It wasn't likely, she considered, that he would find anyone to care about him.
"Poor boy!" She felt quite motherly. For she was the type of girl whom personal emotion drives outwards to include the world in her thoughts, rather than the commoner type of lover who is driven inwards, upon concentrated narrowed sympathies. Ever since she had come to that hotel and had fallen in love, Juliet-fashion, with the first glance at a good-looking male face seen across a dinner-table, the little creature had longed for everyone, not only herself, to be lucky in Love.
She found it horrible that in this supreme matter everything must be left to Fate, to Chance, to the merest Toss-up.
No woman could lift a finger to help either her own love-affair or anybody else's. The pity of it!
But wait——Again the delighted thought thrilled her——If that discovery were true?... The Disturbing Charm! If that could really help. If ... after all?
What was it that Mrs. Cartwright had said to her?
"You look as if a charm had touched you."