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. In his heart he was crying, "How long can I stand this? Another day? Another hour? This loneliness. . . . I must break it. I must tell some one. I _must_ tell some one." As he entered his room he thought that he saw against the farther wall an old gilt mirror and in the light of it a dark figure facing him; a voice, heavy with some great overburdening sorrow, spoke to him. "How terrible a thing it is to be alone with God!" CHAPTER IX REVELATION OF BUNNING (II) 1 The next day the frost broke, and after a practice game on the Saul's ground, in preparation for a rugby match at the end of the week, Olva, bathed and feeling physically a fine, overwhelming fitness, went to see Margaret Craven. This sense of his physical well-being was extraordinary. Mentally he was nearly beaten, almost at the limit of his endurance. Spiritually the catastrophe hovered more closely above him at every advancing moment, but, physically, he had never, in all his life before, felt such magnificent health. He had been sleeping badly now for weeks. He had been eating very little, but he felt no weariness, no faintness. It was as though his body were urging upon him the importance of his resistance, as though he were perceiving, too, with unmistakable clearness the cleavage that there was between body and soul. And indeed this vigour _did_ give him an energy to set about the numberless things that he had arranged to fill every moment of his day--the many little tinkling bells that he had set going to hide the urgent whisper of that other voice. He carried his day through with a rush, a whirl, so that he might be in bed again at night almost before he had finished his dressing in the morning--no pause, no opportunity for silence. . . . And now he must see Margaret Craven, see her for herself, but also see her to talk to her about her brother. How much did Rupert Craven know? How much--and here was the one tremendous question--had he told his sister? As Olva waited, once again, in the musty hall, saw once more the dim red glass of the distant window, smelt again the scent of oranges, his heart was beating so that he could not hear the old woman's trembling voice. How would Margaret receive him? Would there be in her eyes that shadow of distrust that he always saw now in Rupert's? His knees were trembling and he had to stay for an instant and pull himself together before he crossed the drawing-room threshold.