now, gravely, the gaze of the entire company,
entering together, sitting together by the fire, watching with serious
eyes the clumsy efforts of an unhappily ambitious Freshman to make
clear his opinions of the Navy, the Government and the British Islands
generally--only, ultimately, producing a tittering, stammering apology
for having burdened so long with his hapless clamour, the Debate.

2

Olva liked Cardillac--Cardillac liked Olva. They both in their attitude
to College affairs saw beyond the College gates into the wide and bright
world. Cardillac, when it had seemed that no danger could threaten
either his election to the Wolves or the acquisition of his Football
Blue, had regarded both honours quietly and with indifference. It amazed
him now when both these Prizes were seriously threatened that he should
still appreciate and even seek out Dune's company.

Had it been any other man in the College he would have been a very
active enemy, but here was the one man who had that larger air, that
finer style whose gravity was beautiful, whose soul was beyond Wolves
and Rugby football, whose future in the real world promised to be of a
fine and highly ordered kind. Cardillac wished eagerly that these things
might yet be his, but if he were to be beaten, then, of all men in the
world, let it be by Dune. In his own scant, cynical estimate of his
fellow-beings Dune alone demanded a wide and appreciative attention.

To Olva on this evening it mattered but little where he was or what he
did. The snow had ceased to fall, and now, under a starry sky, lay white
and glistening clear; but still with him storm seemed to hover, its snow
beating his body, its fury yieling him no respite.

And now there was no longer any doubt. He faced it with the most
matter-of-fact self-possession of which he was capable. Some-thing was
waiting for his surrender. He figured it, sitting quietly back in the
reading-room, listening to the Debate, watching the faces around him, as
the tracing of some one who was dearly loved. There was nothing stranger
in it all than his own certainty that the Power that pursued him was
tender. And here he crossed the division between the Real and the
Unreal, because his present consciousness of this Power was as actual as
his consciousness of the chairs and tables that filled the reading-room.
That was the essential thing that made the supreme gulf between himself
and his companions. It was not because he had mur