The danger of Olver,--what if he should see Calladine? What if he should irrupt into the room and shout irreparable words before she had time to stop him? The danger of Olver,--what had he said to Lovel? what to Lovel’s wife? But Calladine and Lovel’s wife alike remained insignificant; she and Lovel were the two full of meaning, shut up with the wild, charging Olver in their core of silence. Vaguely somewhere, she was sorry for Calladine, but he was insignificant; she could not pause to consider him; where she and Lovel came together, he faded into that poor wisp drained of blood, that he had dwindled to on the evening of the circus fire, when she and Lovel had stood together on the embankment. They shed him; he slipped off, and only his noise reached them intermittently, scarcely troublesome. Daisy herself was less unreal than Calladine; Daisy knew suffering too, Clare supposed; in a clumsy, common way she knew it; blundering, but human; yes, she could be sorry for the other woman. But they must be sacrificed, the two, Calladine and Daisy, if matters came to a head; sacrificed to the blazing reality of herself and Lovel. Would Olver come again? Would he leave her alone now? Would he give her a chance to forget the words he had spoken? some of them remained, rang in her head, brassy, like beaten gongs; fell on her like big sparks from an anvil, burning. It had been a strange experience, to hear Olver voice the passion that had upreared itself, always mute, in Lovel. Olver came again. He came like an avenging angel, inspired, the crazed creature, by the urgency of his message. Like a reproachful angel he came to rebuke her, grotesquely disguised in his scarecrow travesty; the beauty of his selflessness shone through the ramshackle of his appearance. She scarcely knew whether to find him pathetic or alarming; she wanted to pity, she could only be disturbed; he disturbed her to the darkest places of her soul. The fixity of his idea, the strength of his purpose, his devotion, his anger, raised his simplicity to the plane of nobleness. She could not answer him; she was abashed before him. She was afraid of him, his image pursued her, his upraised hand denouncing her, his eyes and tongue pouring scorn upon her. At moments he seemed like fate itself, like a thing she could not escape from. She never knew at what hour of the day he would come, so all day, sometimes for two or three days on end, she waited, dreading and longing for his coming. She could have refused to see him, but had not the strength; but when she must crush Calladine’s protests, then she had strength in plenty.