He was conscious of three faces. There was Bunning there, white, staring. There was Craven, with his back to a house-door, staring also--and directly before him was a purple face with muddy hair fringing it and little beady eyes. The face of the brute who had been kicking! He must hit. He struck and his fist broke the flesh! He was exultant . . . at last he had, after these weeks of intangibility, found something solid. The face broke away from him. The circle scattered back and the fat, naked body was lying in the mud alone. There was a sudden silence. Olva, conscious of a great power surging through his body, raised his hand again. A voice, shrill, terror in it, screamed, "Look out, man, he'll kill you!" He turned and saw under the lamplight Craven, his eyes blazing, his finger pointed. He was suddenly cold from head to foot. The voice came, it had seemed, from heaven. Craven's eyes were alive now with certainty. Then there was another cry from somewhere of "The police!" and the crowd had melted. In the little street now there were only the body of the policeman and a handful of undergraduates. They raised the man, poured water over him, found some of his clothes, and two men led him, his head lolling, down the street. There was a noisy world somewhere in the distance, but here there was silence. Olva crept slowly out of his exultation and found himself in the cold windy street with Bunning for his only companion. Bunning--now a torn, dirty, bleeding Bunning--gripped his arm. "Did you hear?" "Hear what?" "Craven--when you were fighting there--Craven was watching . . . I saw it all . . . Craven suspects." Olva met the frightened eyes--"He does not suspect." "Didn't you hear? He called out to the cad you were going for. . . ." Then, in a kind of whimper, dismal enough in the dreary little street--"He'll find out--Craven--I know he will. . . . Oh! my God! what _shall_ I do!" Some one had broken the glass of the street lamp and the gas flared above them, noisily. CHAPTER XII LOVE TO THE "VALSE TRISTE" 1 It was all, when one looked back upon it, the rankest melodrama. The darkness, the flaming lamp, Craven's voice and eyes, Bunning . . . it had all arranged itself as though it bad been worked by a master dramatist. At any rate there they now were, the three of them--Olva, Bunning, Craven--placed in a situation that could not possibly stay as it was. In which direction was it going to develop? Bunning had no control at all, it would be he who would supply the next move . . . meanwhile in the back of Olva's mind there was that banging sense of urgency, no time to be lost. He must see Margaret and speak before Rupert spoke to her. Perhaps, even now, Craven was not certain. If he only knew of how much Craven was sure! Did he feel sure enough to speak to Margaret?