ven and Carfax to breakfast, and he would hear them, whilst
he dressed, talking together in the outer room, and, later, he would
pass Bunning in the Court without knowing him. He would be introduced
one day to Margaret Craven and find the house in which she lived a
charming comfortable place, full of light and air, with a croquet lawn
at the back of it, and Mrs. Craven, a nice ordinary middle-aged woman,
stout possibly and fond of gossip. And instead of being President of the
Wolves and a person of importance in the College he would be once again
his old self, knowing nobody, scornful of the whole world and of the
next world as well. And this brought him up with a terrible awakening.
No, that old reality could never be real again, for that old reality
meant a world without God. God had come and had turned the world into
a nightmare . . . or was it only his rebellion against God that had so
made it? But the nightmare was there, the awful uncertainty of every
word, of every step, because with the slightest movement he might
provoke the shadow to new action, if anything so grave, so stern, so
silent as that Pursuit could be termed action, and . . . it was odd how
certainly he knew it . . . so kind. Bunning's face brought him to the
sudden necessity of treating the nightmare as reality, for the moment at
any rate. The staring spectacles piteously appealed to him--

"I can't stand it--I can't stand it."

"Hush!" Olva held his hand, and out of the fog, below in the Court, a
voice was calling--"Craven! Craven! Buck up, you old ass!"

"They're going to light bonfires and things," Bunning quavered, and
then, with a hand that had always before seemed soft and flabby but
that was now hard and burning, he caught Olva's wrist. "I had to see
you--I've been three days now--waiting--all the time for them to come
and arrest you. Oh! I've imagined everything--everything--and the fog
makes it worse. . . . Oh! my God! I can't stand it."

The man was on the edge of hysteria. His senseless giggle threatened
that in another instant it would be beyond all control. There was no
time to be lost. Olva took him by the shoulders, held him firmly and
looked straight into the weak, quivering eyes that were behind the
glasses like fish in a tank.

"Look here, Bunning. Pull yourself together. You _must_--you _must_.
Do you understand? If you've never done it before you must do it now.
Remember that you wanted to help me. Well, now you can do it--bu