now in a fortnight's time, would settle
the football question. It was generally expected that they would try
Dune in that match and judge him finally then on his play. There was a
good deal of betting on the matter, and those who remembered his earlier
games said that nothing could ever make Dune a reliable player and that
it was a reliable player that was wanted.

When Olva came into "Hall" that evening he was conscious of two pairs
of eyes, Craven's and Bunning's. On either side of the high vaulted hall
the tables were ranged, and men, shouting, waving their glasses, lined
the benches. Olva's place was at the end farthest from the door and
nearest the High Table, and he had therefore the whole room to cross.
He was smiling a little, a faint colour in his cheeks. At his own end of
the table Craven was standing, silent, with his eyes gravely fixed upon
Olva's face. Half-way down the hall there was Bunning, and Olva could
see, as he passed up the room, that the man was trembling and was
pressing his hands down upon the table to hold his body still.

When Olva had sat down and the cheering had passed again into the
cheerful hum that was customary, the first voice that greeted him was
Cardillac's.

"Congratulations, old man. I'm delighted."

There was no question of Cardillac's sincerity. Craven was sitting four
places lower down; he had turned the other way and was talking eagerly
to some man on his farther side--but the eyes that had met Olva's two
minutes before had been hostile.

Cardillac went on: "Come in to coffee afterwards, Dune; several men are
coming in."

Olva thanked him and said that he would. The world was waiting to see
how "Cards" would take it, and, beyond question, "Cards" was taking it
very well. Indeed an observer might have noticed that "Cards" was too
absorbed by the way that Dune was "taking it" to "take it" himself
consciously at all. Olva's aloof surveying of the world about him, as a
man on a hill surveys the town in the valley, made of "Cards'" last year
and a half a gaudy and noisy thing. He had thought that his attitude had
been nicely adjusted, but now he saw that there were still heights to be
reached--perhaps in this welcome that he was giving to Dune's success
he might attain his position. . . . Not, in any way, a bad fellow, this
Cardillac--but obsessed by a self-conscious conviction that the world
was looking at him; the world never looks for more than an instant at
self-consciou