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Updated: June 3, 2025
He found a seat at the back of the dark high-hanging ante-chapel. He was alone there. Towards the inner chapel the white-robed choir moved softly; for a moment the curtains were drawn aside revealing the misty candle-light within; the white choir passed through the curtains Fell again, leaving Olva alone with the great golden trumpeting angels above the organ for his company.
Bunning, the coward, had done a braver thing than many more stalwart men would have cared to do. There was bravery there! Moreover, why should not Olva go? He could not sit alone in his room, his nerves would soon be too many for him. What did it matter?
They were not especially clever to-night, thought Olva, as he sat in the shadow away from the light of the fire and watched them sitting back in enormous armchairs, with their legs stretched out, blowing wreaths of smoke into the air, drinking whiskies and sodas . . . no, not clever. Craven, the shadows blacker than ever under his eyes, was on the opposite side of the room from Olva.
Sometimes he jerked his head towards the window as though he heard a step. He had the look of a Christian going into the amphitheatre to face the Beasts. About eleven o'clock of the next morning Olva went to see Margaret. He had written to her the night before and asked her not to tell Rupert the news of their engagement immediately, but, when the morning came, he could not rest with that.
The circle scattered back and the fat, naked body was lying in the mud alone. There was a sudden silence. Olva, conscious of a great power surging through his body, raised his hand again. A voice, shrill, terror in it, screamed, "Look out, man, he'll kill you!" He turned and saw under the lamplight Craven, his eyes blazing, his finger pointed. He was suddenly cold from head to foot.
"The worst of it is," Lawrence was saying, "there are these town cads they'll be in the back somewhere shoutin' ''It 'im, 'Varsity, or somethin' and then runnin' for their lives if they see a Robert comin' . . . it's rotten bein', mixed up with such muck . . . anyhow I'm goin' to have a dash at it " and he had suddenly plunged forward into space. Olva was alone.
"Did you hear?" "Hear what?" "Craven when you were fighting there Craven was watching . . . I saw it all . . . Craven suspects." Olva met the frightened eyes "He does not suspect." "Didn't you hear? He called out to the cad you were going for. . . ." Then, in a kind of whimper, dismal enough in the dreary little street "He'll find out Craven I know he will. . . . Oh! my God! what shall I do!"
"I'm just about done," he murmured, "just about done. It's been all a beastly dream . . . and now you're all right you and Margaret I haven't got to bother about her any more." After hall Olva went to Cardillac's room for the last time. No one there knew that it was for the last time. It seemed to them all that he was just beginning to come out, to be one of them.
He could see her body, her black dress, her eyes, her white neck, the movement towards him that she made when she saw him coming, but there was nothing there. It was as though he had been asked to love a picture. He could not think of her at all as Margaret Craven or of himself as Olva Dune. Only in the glass's reflection he saw the white road stretching to the wood.
Then he apparently changed his mind, muttered a good-night and disappeared round the corner of the building. Olva was alone in the Court. From some room came the sound of voices and laughter, from some other room a piano some one called a name in Little Court. A sheet of stars drew the white light from the snow to heaven. Olva turned very slowly and entered his black stairway.
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