"I always knew he'd do something. . . ." He suddenly knew quite sharply, as though a voice had spoken to him, that he could not endure this any longer. There was gathering upon him the conviction that in a few minutes, rising from his place, he would cry out to the hall--"I, Olva Dune, this afternoon, killed Carfax. You will find his body in the wood." He repeated the words to himself under his breath. "You will find his body in the wood. . . ." "You will find . . ." He finished his beef very quietly and then got up. Craven appealed to him. "I say, Dune, do come and make a four--my rooms, half-past eight--Lawrence and Galleon are the other two." Olva looked down at him with his grave, rather melancholy smile. "Afraid I can't to-night, Craven; must work." "Don't overdo it," Cardillac said. The eyes of the two men met. Olva knew that Cardillac--"Cards" as he was to his friends, liked him; he himself did not hate Cardillac. He was the only man in the College for whom he had respect. They were both of them demanding the same thing from the world. They both of them despised their fellow-creatures. Olva, climbing the stairs to his room, stood for a moment in the dark, before he turned on the lights. He spoke aloud in a whisper, as though some one were with him in the room. "This won't do," he said. "This simply won't do. Your nerves are going. You've only got a few hours of it. Hold on--Think of the beast that he was. Think of the beast that he was." He walked slowly back to the door and turned on the electric lights. He did not sport his oak--if people came to see him he would rather like it: in some odd way it would be more satisfactory than that he should go to see them--but people did not often come to see him. He laid out his books on the table and sat down. He had grown fond of this room. The walls were distempered white. The ceiling was old and black with age. There was a deep red-tiled fireplace. One wall had low brown bookshelves. There were two pictures: one an Around reprint of Matsys' "Portrait of Aegidius"--that wise, kind, tender face; the other an admirable photogravure of Durer's "Selbstbildnis." The books were mainly to do with his favourite historical period--the Later Roman Empire. There was some poetry--an edition of Browning, Swinburne's _Poems and Ballads_, Ernest Dowson, Rossetti, Francis Thompson. There was an edition of Hazlitt, a set of the _Spectator_, one or two novels, _Henry Lessingham_ and _The Roads_ by Galleon, _To Paradise_ by Lester, Meredith's _One of Our Conquerors_ and _Diana of the Crossways, The Ambassadors_ and _Awkward Age_ of Henry James. On the mantelpiece above the fireplace there were three deep blue bowls, the only ornaments in the room. Beyond the little diamond-paned windows, beyond the dark mysteries of the Fellows' garden, a golden mist rose from the lamps of the street, there were stars in the sky.