llac said.

The eyes of the two men met. Olva knew that Cardillac--"Cards" as he was
to his friends, liked him; he himself did not hate Cardillac. He was the
only man in the College for whom he had respect. They were both of them
demanding the same thing from the world. They both of them despised
their fellow-creatures.

Olva, climbing the stairs to his room, stood for a moment in the dark,
before he turned on the lights. He spoke aloud in a whisper, as though
some one were with him in the room.

"This won't do," he said. "This simply won't do. Your nerves are going.
You've only got a few hours of it. Hold on--Think of the beast that he
was. Think of the beast that he was."

He walked slowly back to the door and turned on the electric lights. He
did not sport his oak--if people came to see him he would rather like
it: in some odd way it would be more satisfactory than that he should go
to see them--but people did not often come to see him.

He laid out his books on the table and sat down. He had grown fond of
this room. The walls were distempered white. The ceiling was old and
black with age. There was a deep red-tiled fireplace. One wall had low
brown bookshelves. There were two pictures: one an Around reprint of
Matsys' "Portrait of Aegidius"--that wise, kind, tender face; the other
an admirable photogravure of Durer's "Selbstbildnis." The books were
mainly to do with his favourite historical period--the Later Roman
Empire. There was some poetry--an edition of Browning, Swinburne's
_Poems and Ballads_, Ernest Dowson, Rossetti, Francis Thompson. There
was an edition of Hazlitt, a set of the _Spectator_, one or two novels,
_Henry Lessingham_ and _The Roads_ by Galleon, _To Paradise_ by Lester,
Meredith's _One of Our Conquerors_ and _Diana of the Crossways, The
Ambassadors_ and _Awkward Age_ of Henry James.

On the mantelpiece above the fireplace there were three deep blue bowls,
the only ornaments in the room. Beyond the little diamond-paned windows,
beyond the dark mysteries of the Fellows' garden, a golden mist rose
from the lamps of the street, there were stars in the sky.

He faced his books. For a quarter of an hour he saw before him the
hanging, baggy cheeks, the white, staring eyes, the glittering ring on
the weak finger. His hands began to tremble. . . .

There was a timid knock on the door, and he was instantly sure that the
body had been found, and that they had come to arrest him. He stood
back from