"I don't see what it's got to do with you."
"It's got this much to do with me--that he came to me this morning with a story so absurd that it proves that he can't be altogether right in his head. He told me that he had confided this absurd story to you."
"I don't suppose," Olva went on at last gently, "that we've either of us got very much time, and there's a great deal to be done, so let's go straight to it. Bunning told me this morning that he declared to you yesterday that he--of all people in the world--had murdered Carfax."
"Yes," at last Craven sullenly muttered, "he told me that."
"I didn't believe that _he'd_ done it--no. But he knows who _did_ do it. He's got all the details. Some one has told him."
Craven was trembling. Olva pushed a chair towards him.
"I know that some one told him," Olva said quietly, "because I told him."
"Then you know who----" Craven's voice was a whisper.
"I know," said Olva, "because it was I who killed Carfax."
Craven took it---the moment for which he'd been waiting so long--in the most amazing way.
"Oh!" he cried, like a child who has cut its finger. "Oh! I wish you hadn't!" There was the whole of Craven's young struggle with an astounding world in that cry.
Then, after that, there was a long silence, and had some one come into the room he would have looked at the two men before the fire and have supposed that they were gently and comfortably falling off to sleep.
Olva at last said; "Of course I know that you have suspected me for a long time. Everything played into your hands. I have done my very utmost to prevent your having positive proof of the thing, but that part of the business is now done with. You know, and you can do what you please with the knowledge."
But, now that the moment had come, Rupert Craven could do nothing with it.
"I don't want to do anything," he muttered at last. "I'm not up to doing anything. I don't understand it. I'm not the sort of fellow who ought to be in this kind of thing at all."
That was how he now saw it, as an unfair advantage that had been taken of him. This point of view changed his position to the extent of his now almost appealing to Olva to help him out of it.
"Your telling me like that has made it all so difficult. I feel now suddenly as though I hated Carfax and hadn't the least objection to somebody doing for him. And _that's_ all wrong--murder's an awful thing--one ought to feel bad about it." Then finally, with the cry of a child in the dark, "But this _isn't_ life, it never _has_ been life since that day I heard of Carfax being killed. It's the sort of thing--it's been for weeks the sort of thing--that you read of in books or see at the Adelphi; and I'm not that kind of fellow. I tell you I've been mad all this last month, getting it on the brain, seeing things night and day. My one idea was to make you own up to it, but I never thought of what was going to happen when you did."