Well, at least he would have his game of football first---no one could take his afternoon away from him. Margaret would be there to watch him and he would play! Oh! he would play as he had never played in his life before!
Bunning's voice came to him from a great distance---
"What are you going to do? What are you going to say to Craven?"
"Say to him? Why, I shall tell him, of course---tell him everything."
Bunning leapt from his chair. In his urgency he put his hands on Olva's arm: "No, no, no. You mustn't do that. Why it will be as though I'd murdered you. Tell him I did it. Make him believe it. You can---you're clever enough. Make him feel that I did it. You mustn't, mustn't---let him know. Oh, please, please. I'll kill myself if you do. I will really."
Olva gravely, quietly, put his hands on Bunning's shoulders.
"It's all right---it had to come out. I've been avoiding it all this time, escaping it, but it had to come. Don't you be afraid of it. I daresay Craven won't do anything. After all he loves his sister and she cares for him. That will influence him. But, anyhow, all that's done with. There are bigger things in question than Craven knowing about Carfax, and you were meant to tell him---you were really. You've just forced me to see what's the right thing to do---that's all."
Bunning was, surely, in the light of it, a romantic figure.
As Olva was changing into his football things, Cardillac appeared.
"Come up to the field with me, will you? I've got a hansom."
Olva finished tying his boots and stood up. Cardillac looked at him.
He felt splendid. Never before had he been so conscious of the right to be alive. His football clothes smelt of the earth and the air. He moved his arms and legs with wonderful freedom. His blood was pumping through his body as though death, disease, infirmity such things---were of another planet.
For such a man as he there should only be air, love, motion, the begetting of children, the surprising splendour of a sudden death. Now already Craven was waiting for him.
He had sent a note round to Craven's rooms; he had said, "Come in to see me after the match---five o'clock. I have something to tell you."
Meanwhile it was nice of Cardillac to come. They exchanged no words about it, but they understood one another entirely. It was as though Cardillac had said---"I expect that you're going to knock me out of this Rugger Blue as you knocked me out of the Wolves, and I want to show you that we're pals all the way through."