"A field untilled, a web unwove,
A flower withheld from sun or bee,
An alien in the courts of Love——"
Kipling.
Accident decided it for her.
As she was running down the broad red and white steps at the front of the hotel, Olwen met, coming up, the woman whom Mrs. Cartwright had noticed at lunch for her hopeless well-off spinsterishness. The Spinster carried a guide book, a flowering-plant in a pot with paper round it, and a bound map.
She wore over those expensive tweeds of hers those furs which none but the young and radiant should venture to wear; grey squirrel. Her face was blank.
It lighted into a tentative smile as the young girl turned and ran back a few steps to the top, waiting for her.
"Good afternoon; we mustn't cross on the stairs," Olwen called. "It's unlucky!"
Was it her fancy, or did the Spinster look pathetically pleased because some one had said "good afternoon" and had made a playful remark?
Up the steps she hastened, rather stiffly, her figure being of the kind that seems all clothes.