Olva seized his throat-"Stop it, you damned fool!" . . . He looked straight into the eyes--Bunning ceased as suddenly as he had begun. The horrible, helpless noise fell with a giggle into silence; he collapsed into a chair and hid his face in his hands. There was a long pause. Olva gazed at the bending figure, summoning all his will power to hold the shaking thing in control. He waited. Then, softly, he began again. "Bunning, I did you a great wrong when I told you--you're not up to it." From behind the hands there came a muffled voice--"I _am_ up to it." "This sort of thing makes it impossible." "It shall never happen again." Bunning lifted his tear-stained face. "It's been coming for days. I've been so dreadfully frightened. But now--that I've been with you--it's better, much better. If only--" and his voice caught--"if only--no one suspects." Olva gravely answered, "No one suspects." "If I thought that any one--that there was any chance--that any one had an idea. . . ." Craven's voice was echoing in Olva's ears. He answered again-- "No one has the slightest suspicion." Bunning got up heavily from the chair--"I shall be better now. It's been so awful having a secret. I never could keep one. I always used to do wrong things at home and then tell them and then get punished. But I will try. But if I thought that they guessed--" There was a rap on the door and Bunning gasped, stepped back against the wall, his face white, his knees trembling. "Don't be such a fool," Olva said fiercely. "If you're like that every time any one knocks you may as well chuck it at once. Look sensible, man. Pull yourself together." Lawrence entered, bringing log with him from the stairs. His big, thick-set body was so reassuring, so healthy in its sturdiness, so strange a contrast to the trembling figure against the wall that Olva felt an immense relief. "You know Bunning, Lawrence?" "How do?" Lawrence gripped Bunning's fingers, nodded to Bunning's stumbling words and smiled genially. Bunning got to the door, blinked upon them both from behind his glasses and was gone--muttering something about "work . . . letters to write." "Rum feller," said Lawrence, and dismissed him with a chuckle. "Shouldn't ever have thought him your style, Dune . . . but you're a clever feller and clever fellers always see more in stupid fellers than ordinary fellers do . . . come out and see the rag." "Rag! What rag?" "It's November 5th."