to support.

"I'm just about done," he murmured, "just about done. It's been all
a beastly dream . . . and now you're all right--you and Margaret--I
haven't got to bother about her any more."

2

After hall Olva went to Cardillac's room for the last time. No one there
knew that it was for the last time. It seemed to them all that he was
just beginning to come out, to be one of them. The football match
of that afternoon had been wonderful enough for anything, and the
excitement of it lingered still about Cardillac's rooms, thick now with
tobacco-smoke, crowded with men, noisy with laughter. The air was so
strong with smoke, the lights so dim, the voices so many, that Olva
finding a corner near an open window slipped, it might almost seem, from
the world. Outside the snow, threatening all day, now fell heavily; the
old Court took it with a gentleness that showed that the snow was meant
for it, and the snow covered the grey roofs and the smooth grass with
a satisfaction that could almost be heard, so deep was it. Just this
little window-pane between the world that Olva was leaving and the world
to which he was going!

He caught fragments: "Just that last run--gorgeous--but old Snodky says
that that horse of his---"

"My dear fellow, you take it from me--they can't get on without
it. . . . Now a girl I know----"

"They fairly fell upon one another's necks and hugged. Talk of the
fatted calf! Now if I'd asked the governor----"

Around him there came, with a poignancy, a beauty, that, now that he was
to lose it all, was like a wound, the wonder of this Cambridge. Then he
had it, the marvellous moment! On the other side of the window the
still court, a few twinkling lights, the powdering snow--and here the
vitality, the energy, the glowing sense of two thousand souls marching
together upon Life and seizing it, with a shout, lifting it, stepping
out with it as though it were one long glory! Afterwards what matter?
There had been the moment, never to be forgotten! Cambridge, the
beautiful threshold!

For an instant the sense of his own forthcoming journey--away from life,
as it seemed to him--caught him as he sat there. "What will God do with
me?"

From the outer world through the whispering snow, he caught the echo of
the Voice--"My Son . . . My Son."

Soon he heard Lawrence's tremendous laugh--"Where's Dune? Is he here?"

Lawrence found him and sat down beside him.

"By Jupiter, old man, I was frightened for