She stopped for a moment--then her words came more slowly: "It was a very little thing--it was not a very bad thing--he was a wicked man . . . but God has punished me and He will punish me until I die. All these years He has pursued me, urging me to confess--I have fought and struggled against it, but at last He has beaten me--He has driven me. . . . Oh! the relief! the relief!" She looked at him curiously. "If you did not know, why did I feel that you understood and sympathized? Have you no horror of me now?" For answer, he bent and kissed her cheek. "I too am very lonely. I too know what God can do." Then she clung to him as though she would never let him leave her. CHAPTER XIV GOD 1 Half an hour later he was in his room again, and the real world had come back to him. It had come back with the surprise of some supernatural mechanism; it was as though the sofa, chairs, pictures had five minutes before been grass and toadstools in a world of mist and now were sofa, chairs and pictures again. He was absolutely sane, whereas half an hour ago he had been held almost by an enchantment. If Margaret were here with him now, here in his room--not in that dim, horrible Rocket Road house, raised it might almost seem by the superstitions and mists of his own conscience--ah! how he would love her! He was filled with a sense of energy and enterprise. He would have it out with Rupert, laugh away his suspicions, reconcile him to the idea of the marriage, finally drag Margaret from that horrible house. As with a man who has furious attacks of neuralgia, and between the agony of them feels, so great is the relief, that no pain will ever come to him again, so Olva was now, for an instant, the Olva of a month ago. Four times had the Pursuer thus given him respite--on the morning after the murder, in St. Martin's Chapel on that same evening, after his confession to Bunning, and now. But Aegidius, looking down from his wall, saw the strong, stern face of his young friend and loved him and knew that, at last, the pursuit was at an end. . . . Bunning came in. 2 Bunning came in. The little silver clock had just struck a quarter to one. The match was at half-past two. Olva knew at his first sight of Bunning that something had happened. The man seemed dazed, he dragged his great legs slowly after him and planted them on the floor as though he wanted something that was secure, like a man who had begun desperately to slip down a crevasse. His back was bowed and his cheeks were flushed as though some one had been striking him, but his eyes told Olva everything. They were the eyes of a child who has been wakened out of sleep and sees Terror. "What is it? Sit down. Pull yourself together." "Oh! Dune! . . . My God, Dune!" The man's voice had the unreality of men walking in a cinematograph. "Craven's coming." "Coming! Where?" "Here!" "Now?" "I don't know--when. He knows." "You told him?"