fantastic
walls that hung above them. Beauty, too, on this November evening, shone
through the misty lamplight. Beauty in the dark purple of the evening
sky, beauty in the sudden vista of grey courts with lighted windows,
like eyes, seen through stone gateways. Beauty in the sudden golden
shadows of some corner shop glittering through the mist; beauty in the
overshadowing of the many towers that were like grey clouds in mid-air.

The little streets chattered with people--undergraduates in Norfolk
jackets, grey flannel trousers short enough to show the brightest
of socks, walked arm in arm--voices rang out--men called across the
streets--hansoms rattled like little whirlwinds along the cobbles---many
bells were ringing--dark bodies, leaning from windows, gave uncouth
cries . . . over it all the mellow lamplight.

Into this happy confusion Olva Dune plunged. He shook off from him, as
a dog shakes water from his back, the memory of that white mist-haunted
road. Once he deliberately faced the moment when he had been sick--faced
it, heard once again the dull, lumbering sound that the body had made as
it bundled along the road, and then put it from him altogether. Now for
battle . . . his dark eyes challenged this shifting cloud of life.

He went round to the stable where Bunker was housed, chattered with the
blue-chinned ostler, and then, for a moment, was alone with the dog. How
much had Bunker seen? How much had he understood? Was it fancy, or did
the dog crouch, the tiniest impulse, away from him as he bent to pat
him? Bunker was tired; he relapsed on to his haunches, wagged his
tail, grinned, but in his eyes there seemed, although the lamplight was
deceptive, to be the faintest shadow of an apprehension.

"Good old dog, good old Bunker." Bunker wagged his tail, but the tiniest
shiver passed, like a thought, through his body.

Olva left him.

As he passed through the streets he met men whom he knew. They nodded or
flung a greeting. How strange to think that to-morrow night they would
be speaking of him in low, grave voices as one who was already dead. "I
knew the fellow quite well, strange, reserved man--nobody really knew
him. With these foreigners, you know . . ."

Oh! he could hear them!

He passed through the gates of Saul's. The porter touched his hat. The
great Centre Court was shrouded in mist, and out of the white veil the
grey buildings rose, gently, on every side. There were lights now in
the windows;