"I must be going."
Olva noticed at once that there was a new note in Craven's voice. The boy moved, restlessly, about the room.
"I say," he brought out at last, laughing nervously, "don't go asleep when I'm in the room again. It gives one fits."
Both men were conscious of some subtle, vague impression moving in the darkness between them.
Olva answered gravely, "I've been sticking in at an old paper I've been working on—no use to anybody, and I've been neglecting my proper work for it, but it's absorbed me. That's what's given me such bad nights, I expect."
"I shouldn't have thought," Craven answered slowly, "that anything ever upset you; I shouldn't have thought you had any nerves. And, in any case, I didn't know you had thought twice about the Carfax business."
Olva turned on the electric light. At the same moment there was a loud knock on the door.
Craven opened it, showing in the doorway a pale and flustered Bunning. Craven looked at him with a surprised stare, and then, calling out good-bye to Olva, walked off.
Bunning stood hesitating, his great spectacles shining owl-like in the light.
Dune didn't want him. He was, he reflected as he looked at him, the very last person whom he did want. And then Bunning had most irritating habits. There was that trick of his of pushing up his spectacles nervously higher on to his nose. He bad a silly shrill laugh, and he had that lack of tact that made him, when you had given him a shilling's worth of conversation and confidence, suppose that you had given him half-a-crown's worth and expect that you would very shortly give him five shillings' worth. He presumed on nothing at all, was confidential when he ought to have been silent, and gushing when he should simply have thanked you with a smile. Nothing, moreover, to look at. He had the kind of complexion that looks as though it would break into spots at the earliest opportunity. His clothes fitted him badly and were dusty at the knees; his hair was of no colour nor strength whatever, and he bit his nails. His eyes behind his spectacles were watery and restless, and his linen always looked as though it had been quite clean yesterday and would be quite filthy to-morrow.