"What is it? Sit down. Pull yourself together."
"Oh! Dune! . . . My God, Dune!" The man's voice had the unreality of men walking in a cinematograph. "Craven's coming."
"Coming! Where?"
"Here!"
"Now?"
"I don't know—when. He knows."
"You told him?"
"I thought it best. I thought I was doing right. It's all gone wrong. Oh! these last two days! what I've suffered!"
Now for the first time in the history of the whole affair Olva Dune may be said to have felt sheer physical terror, not terror of the mist, of the road, of the darkness, of the night, but terror of physical things—of the loss of light and air, of the denial of food, of physical death. . . . For a moment the room swam about him. He heard, in the Court below him, some men laughing—a dog was barking. Then he saw that Bunning was on the edge of hysteria. The bedmaker would come in and find him laughing—as he had laughed once before.
Olva stilled the room with a tremendous effort—the floor sank, the table and chairs tossed no longer.