"I don't know," he answered. "This seems to have altered everything. I ought now to be hating you--I don't. I ought to shudder at the sight of you--I don't. The Carfax business seems to have slipped right back, to be ages ago, not to matter. All I suppose I wanted was to be reassured about you--if Margaret loved you. And now I _am_ reassured. I believe you know what to do." "Yes, I know what to do," said Olva. "I'm going away to-morrow for a long time. I shall always love Margaret--there can never be any one else--but I shall not marry her unless I can come back cleared." "And who--what--can clear you?" "Ah! who knows! There'll be something for me to do, I expect. . . . I will see Margaret to-morrow--and say good-bye." Craven's face was white, the eyelids had almost closed, his head hung forward as though it were too heavy to support. "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." 2 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. The football match of that afternoon had been wonderful enough for anything, and the excitement of it lingered still about Cardillac's rooms, thick now with tobacco-smoke, crowded with men, noisy with laughter. The air was so strong with smoke, the lights so dim, the voices so many, that Olva finding a corner near an open window slipped, it might almost seem, from the world. Outside the snow, threatening all day, now fell heavily; the old Court took it with a gentleness that showed that the snow was meant for it, and the snow covered the grey roofs and the smooth grass with a satisfaction that could almost be heard, so deep was it. Just this little window-pane between the world that Olva was leaving and the world to which he was going! He caught fragments: "Just that last run--gorgeous--but old Snodky says that that horse of his---" "My dear fellow, you take it from me--they can't get on without it. . . . Now a girl I know----" "They fairly fell upon one another's necks and hugged. Talk of the fatted calf! Now if I'd asked the governor----" Around him there came, with a poignancy, a beauty, that, now that he was to lose it all, was like a wound, the wonder of this Cambridge. Then he had it, the marvellous moment! On the other side of the window the still court, a few twinkling lights, the powdering snow--and here the vitality, the energy, the glowing sense of two thousand souls marching together upon Life and seizing it, with a shout, lifting it, stepping out with it as though it were one long glory! Afterwards what matter? There had been the moment, never to be forgotten! Cambridge, the beautiful threshold!