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 do it. There they sat, raising and lowering their huge mugs of beer, discussing military matters, and rising every now and again to gravely salute some officer as he passed, and to receive as gravely his grave salute in return.

There seemed to be a deal of saluting to be gone through. Officers kept entering and passing through the room in an almost continual stream, and every time one came in sight all the military drinkers and eaters rose and saluted, and remained at the salute until the officer had passed.

One young soldier, who was trying to eat a plate of soup near us, I felt quite sorry for. Every time he got the spoon near his mouth an officer invariably hove in view, and down would have to go the spoon, soup and all, and up he would have to rise. It never seemed to occur


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 THE CAMBRIDGE ANCIENT HISTORY

VOLUME TWO


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 to the silly fellow to get under the table and finish his dinner there.

We had half-an-hour to spare between dinner and the starting of our train, and B. suggested that we should go into the cathedral. That is B.'s one weakness, churches. I have the greatest difficulty in getting him past a churchdoor. We are walking along a street, arm in arm, talking as rationally and even as virtuously as need be, when all at once I find that B. has become silent and abstracted.

I know what it is; he has caught sight of a church. I pretend not to notice any change in him, and endeavour to hurry him on. He lags more and more behind, however, and at last stops altogether.

"Come, come," I say to him, encouragingly, "pull yourself together, and be a man. Don't think about it. Put it behind you, and determine that you won't be conquered. Come, we shall be round the corner in another minute, where you won't be able to see it. Take my hand, and let's run!"

He makes a few feeble steps forward with me, and then stops again.

"It's no good, old man," he says, with a sickly smile, so full of pathos that it is impossible to find it in one's heart to feel anything but pity for him. "I can't help it. I have given way to this sort of thing too long. It is too


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 late to reform now. You go on and get a drink somewhere; I'll join you again in a few minutes. Don't worry about me; it's no good."

And back he goes with tottering steps, while I sadly pass on into the nearest café, and, over a glass of absinthe or cognac, thank Providence that I learnt to control my craving for churches in early youth, and so am not now like this poor B.

In a little while he comes in, and sits down beside me. There is a wild, unhealthy excitement in his eye, and, under a defiant air of unnatural gaiety, he attempts to hide his consciousness of guilt.

"It was a lovely altar-cloth," he whispers to me, with an enthusiasm that only makes one sorrow for him the more, so utterly impossible does it cause all hope of cure to seem. "And they've got a coffin in the north crypt that is simply a poem. I never enjoyed a sarcophagus more in all my life."

I do not say much at the time; it would be useless. But after the day is done, and we are standing beside our little beds, and all around is as silent as one can expect it to be in an hotel where people seem to be arriving all night long with heavy luggage, and to be all, more or less, in trouble, I argue with him, and gently reprove him. To avoid the appearance of sermonising as much as possible, I put it on mere grounds of expediency.

"How are we to find time," I say, "to go to all the places that we really ought to go to—to all the cafés and theatres and music-halls and beer-gardens and dancing. saloons that we want to visit—if you waste half the precious day loafing about churches and cathedrals?"

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 church-door again. But next morning, when the temptation comes, all his good resolutions are swept away, and again he yields. It is no good being angry with him, because he evidently does really try; but there is something about the mere odour of a church that he simply cannot withstand.

Not knowing, then, that this weakness of his for churches was so strong, I made no objection to the proposed visit to Cologne Cathedral, and, accordingly, towards it we wended our way. B. has seen it before, and knows all about it. He tells me it was begun about the middle of the thirteenth century, and was only completed ten years ago. It seems to me that there must have been gross delay on the part of the builder. Why, a plumber would be ashamed to take as long as that over a job!

B. also asserts that the two towers are the highest church towers in the world. I dispute this, and deprecate the towers generally. B. warmly defends them. He says they are higher than any building in Europe, except the Eiffel Tower.

"Oh, dear no!" I say, "there are many buildings higher than they in Europe—to say nothing of Asia and America."

I have no authority for making this assertion. As a matter of fact, I know nothing whatever about the matter. I merely say it to irritate B. He appears to take a sort of personal interest in the building, and he enlarges upon its beauties and advantages with as much fervour as if he were an auctioneer trying to sell the place.

He retorts that the towers are 512 feet high.

I say:

"Nonsense! Somebody has imposed upon you, because they see you are a foreigner."


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 He becomes quite angry at this, and says he can show me the figures in the guide-book.

"The guide-book!" I reply, scornfully, "You'll believe a newspaper next!"

B. asks me, indignantly, what height I should say they are, then. I examine them critically for a few minutes, and then give it as my opinion that they do not exceed 510 feet at the very outside. B. seems annoyed with me, and we enter the church in silence.

There is little to be said about a cathedral. Except to the professional sightseer, one is very much like another. Their beauty to me lies, not in the paintings and sculpture they give houseroom to, nor in the bones and bric-à-brac piled up in their cellars, but in themselves—their echoing vastness, their deep silence.

Above the little homes of men, above the noisy teeming streets, they rise like some soft strain of perfect music, cleaving its way amid the jangle of discordant notes. Here, where the voices of the world sound faint; here, where the city's clamour comes not in, it is good to rest for a while—if only the pestering guides would leave one alone—and think.

There is much help in Silence. From its touch we gain renewed life. Silence is to the soul what his Mother Earth was to Briareus. From contact with it we rise healed of our hurts and strengthened for the fight.

Amid the babel of the schools we stand bewildered and affrighted. Silence gives us peace and hope. Silence teaches us no creed, only that God's arms are around the universe.

How small and unimportant seem all our fretful troubles and ambitions when we stand with them in our hand before the great calm face of Silence! We smile at them ourselves, and are ashamed.


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 pity and sympathy. A man beating his wife … he could have ordered to be beaten to death. By his impulsive character on such occasions he not unfrequently brought himself and us into a ' fix' It is necessary to have seen Marx with his children in order to understand fully the deep mind and the childlike heart of this hero of science, In his spare minutes or on his walks he carried them around, played with them the wildest, merriest games—in short, was a child among children … When his own children were grown up his grandchildren took their place. … Jean or Johnny Longuet, his first daughter, Jenny's, eldest son, was grandpa's pet. He could do whatever he pleased with him, and Johnny knew it." Once Johnny "conceived the ingenious thought of transforming 'Mohr' into an omnibus, on the driver's seat of which, i.e., Marx's shoulders, he seated himself, while Engels and myself were to be the omnibus horses. Having been hitched up, there was a wild chase. … And Marx had to trot until the sweat poured down his forehead, and when Engels or I tried to slacken our pace down came the whip of the cruel driver, 'You naughty horse. En avant,' and so forth, until Marx could stand it no longer: then, by negotiation with Johnny, a halt was called."

Liebknecht further throws some interesting sidelights on Marx's character. For instance, his ability at times to to play mad, boyish pranks; his love of chess—how he was capable of playing till late at night and the whole of the next day, and when he lost a game he would at the same time lose his temper, and even be most disagreeable at home. On this account Mrs. Marx and Lenchen (Helen Demuth) begged Liebknecht not to play chess with "Mohr" in the evening.

Marx was a wonderfully clear and efficient teacher. He was stern in that he demanded the thoroughness which he himself practised; at the same time, he was kind, patient, ever ready to help. As for popularity, he cared nothing for it. He knew that the vast masses could not for the time being understand him, and a favourite saying of his was: "Follow your course and let others talk."

Marx's eldest boy, Edgar, a very gifted child, but weakly from his birth, died in London when about 8 years


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Author:Balthazar Gerbier

Works

 * The Second Lecture: Being an Introduction to Cosmography (1649)
 * The Humble Remonstrance (1651)
 * A Sommary Description (1660)
 * A Brief Discourse Concerning the Three Chief Principles of Magnificent Building (1662)
 * Two letters, in Catalogue of the Works of Art in the Possession of Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1839)

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 old, "I shall never forget the scene," says Liebknecht. The sobbing Lenchen, the weeping mother convulsively clasping her two girls, and Marx in terrible excitement almost angrily refusing all consolation. At the funeral Marx sat in the carriage, "dumb, holding his head in his hands. I stroked his forehead: 'Mohr, you still have your wife, your girls and us-and we love you so well.' 'You cannot give me back my boy!' he groaned. … At the graveside Marx was so excited that I stepped to his side, fearing he might jump after the coffin.'

Thirty years later, when his wife died, Engels likewise at the funeral had to grasp his arm quickly or he would have jumped into her grave. Marx's wife died of cancer, December 2nd, 1881, after a brave fight with death. In spite of terrible suffering she maintained interest in general affairs to the last, and tried to dispel the fears of her family by joking and bright spirits. Their daughter Eleanor says: "When our dear general (Engels) came, he said—what I then almost resented—'Mohr is dead too,' and it was really so." Owing to overwork, his habit of often working almost all night, he had so undermined his originally strong constitution that he had already been ill for some time, and was obliged from time to time to give up work and travel for his health. His wife's death, however, undid all the good his travels had done him. He tried to keep up his strength and heart for the sake of the movement, but when, at the beginning of January, 1883, Jenny, his eldest daughter, also died, he never recovered from the blow. He died quietly in his study arm-chair on March I4th, 1883. Thus passed away, as Engels said, the "greatest mind of the second half of the 19th Century," and for his epitaph we have every right to use the words chosen by Eleanor Marx:

So mixed in him that Nature might stand up

And say to all the world: 'This was a man.'"


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 Silence teaches us how little we are—how great we are. In the world's market-places we are tinkers, tailors, apothecaries, thieves—respectable or otherwise, as the case may be—mere atoms of a mighty machine—mere insects in a vast hive.

It is only in Silence that it comes home to us that we are something much greater than this—that we are men, with all the universe and all eternity before us.

It is in Silence we hear the voice of Truth. The temples and the marts of men echo all night and day to the clamour of lies and shams and quackeries. But in Silence falsehood cannot live. You cannot float a lie on Silence. A lie has to be puffed aloft, and kept from falling by men's breath. Leave a lie on the bosom of Silence, and it sinks. A truth floats there fair and stately, like some stout ship upon a deep ocean. Silence buoys her up lovingly for all men to see. Not until she has grown worn-out and rotten, and is no longer a truth, will the waters of Silence close over her.

Silence is the only real thing we can lay hold of in this world of passing dreams. Time is a shadow that will vanish with the twilight of humanity; but Silence is a part of the eternal. All things that are true and lasting have been taught to men's hearts by Silence.

Among all nations, there should be vast temples raised where the people might worship Silence and listen to it, for it is the voice of God.

These fair churches and cathedrals that men have reared around them throughout the world, have been built as homes for mere creeds—this one for Protestantism, that one for Romanism, another for Mahomedanism. But God's Silence dwells in all alike, only driven forth at times by the tinkling of bells and the mumbling of


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 CHAPTER V

HE imaginative flights of Clyde in connection with all this—his dreams of what it might mean for him to be connected with so glorious an institution—can only be suggested. For his ideas of luxury were in the main so extreme and mistaken and gauche—mere wanderings of a repressed and unsatisfied fancy, which as yet had had nothing but imaginings to feed it.

He went back to his old duties at the drug-store—but now for the balance of this Friday and Saturday and Sunday and Monday until late in the day, he walked on air, really. His mind was not on what he was doing, and several times his superior at the drug-store had to remind him to “wake-up.” And after hours, instead of going directly home, he walked north to the corner of 14th and Baltimore, where stood this great hotel, and looked at it. There, at midnight even, before each of the three principal entrances—one facing each of three streets—was a doorman in a long maroon coat with many buttons and a high-rimmed and long-visored maroon cap. And inside, behind looped and fluted French silk curtains, were the still blazing lights, the à la carte dining-room and the American grill in the basement near one corner still open. And about them were many taxis and cars. And there was music always—from somewhere.

After surveying it all this Friday night and again on Saturday and Sunday morning, he returned on Monday afternoon at the suggestion of Mr. Squires and was greeted by that individual rather crustily, for by then he had all but forgotten him. But seeing that at the moment he was actually in need of help, and being satisfied that Clyde might be of service, he led him into his small office under the stair, where, with a very superior manner and much actual indifference, he proceeded to question him as to his parentage, where he lived, at what he had worked before and where, what his father did for a living—a poser that for Clyde, for he was proud and so ashamed to admit that his parents conducted a mission and preached on the streets. Instead he replied (which was true at times) that his father canvassed for a washing machine and wringer company—and

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“ dear,” said Jane Warburton, days later, “you are as platitudinously impressive as a Bishop!”

“A remark,” rejoined the financier, “which lacks in reverence both to the church and to myself.”

“Jane,” he said after a pause and, rather, as if the admission hurt him, “you are my only child, and I love you.”

“You don't exactly show it, dad!” came the quick reply.

“I show it in my own way.”

“Your own way is to …”

“To stop you from doing a foolish thing which you'd regret sooner or later.”

“One never regrets love, dad!”

“One does, too!”

And, for the tenth time, Mr. Warburton reiterated his objections to the marriage of his daughter and Hector Wade.

Mr. Ezra Warburton was a manly man—what is called so in lieu of a better term—who had always been in the habit of considering his daughter's sex as rather an indelicate intrusion into his business life—which was his whole life. Of course he loved her,

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 loved her dearly, but the fact that she was a girl and not a boy somehow rankled; it was the only thing for which he had ever blamed his dead wife. Even then he would not have minded it so much, had not Jane, at an early age, exhibited certain man-like characteristics, chiefly a decisive and stubborn independence, which he would have admired in a son, but which irritated him in a daughter; the more so as Jane, with either conscious or unconscious cleverness, used her strictly feminine characteristics to back up and reënforce her masculine qualities—tempering steel with diamond, as it were—a combination which Mr. Warburton found it hard to combat.

The result was that she usually had her own way; and a further result was chromatic friction. As a rule, at least in minor matters, this friction was allayed by Mr. Warburton giving in, but in more important matters he acted differently at times, and showed a stubbornness which fully equaled hers.

He did so now, as he repeated that, even supposing that Hector had been innocently accused of cheating at cards, even granting that he had made a splendid success as de facto regent of Tamerlanistan, the fact of the old scandal which had driven him from England still existed, and could not be overlooked.

“What difference does that make?” demanded Jane. “He lives here—and not in England. He's through with Mayfair and Belgravia and the Horse Guards Barracks!”

“The greater his success here, the more his enemies …”

“He has no enemies—no personal enemies!”

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“He will have pro rata with his success. Yes—the greater his success here, the more his enemies will dig into his past, and make capital out of the old scandal. And, sooner or later, he is bound to visit England. Chiefly if he marries you. You don't want to stay in Tamerlanistan all the rest of your natural life!”

And then he reminded her of her old promise not to marry Hector Wade until the latter had completely cleared his name.

Hector, when appealed to by Jane, agreed with Mr. Warburton.

He did not know what it was: either the subtle influence of the fatalistic Orient, or a deep conviction in his own heart; but, somehow, he felt absolutely sure that, sooner or later, the stigma and taint that marred his name would be removed.

“Why are you so sure?” asked Jane. “Have you heard from home? Has your brother confessed perhaps?” For, by this time, though Hector, faithful to the promise he had given his father, had not given her any explanation of the affair, she, putting two and two together, had made to herself a pretty clear picture of what had happened. “Or has your father …?”

“No, dear. It's something different. You see, I'm not a religious man—what goes under the name of religion, what? But I have a certain belief in the everlasting squareness and decency of—oh, you know—things!”

“Things!” mimicked Jane. “You are an inarticulate old dear, and I'm afraid you'll be a most unsatisfactory lover!”

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“No, I won't!” he said, boyishly, just a little hurt. “And that's just what I mean. Love! You see, love is the greatest force in the world, and I do love you, heart and soul and body, and every last, deepest, finest, most secret thought in me. And—why—it's bound to come out all right—don't you see—sooner or later!”

“Yes,” murmured Jane, “it's bound to come out all right!”

It did, rather sooner than Hector expected; and it began, not many weeks afterwards, with the governor of the western marches entering the audience hall arm in arm with Musa Al-Mutasim, and proclaiming, with a great deal of self-righteousness, that—by the red pig's bristles!—he had now proved once and for all his loyalty which, so it appeared, glistened in his soul as “the early rays of the young sun glisten in the tree tops of a staunch forest, O Aziza Nurmahal!”

With which and, too, with a triumphant side glance at his twin brother and worst enemy, the governor of the eastern marches, he related that the confidential messengers whom he had despatched to his headquarters in the western province had returned, that his and Musa Al-Mutasim's armies had sworn fealty to the established government, and that even now a picked squadron under the command of Koom Khan was on the way, with the two sahebs as prisoners, to be dealt with as they deserved.

“As they deserve, by the horns of the Archangel Ashrafeel!” echoed the Arab, winking significantly at Wahab al-Shaitan, the chief executioner.

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Three days later, amidst great excitement that spread from the streets and bazaars and mosques, where the cries of the populace were like a noise of a distant sea ebbing and flowing and whirling and eddying in regular beats, to the highest turret of the Gengizkhani palace where the “Watcher of the Far Places” broke into high-pitched ululations of triumph, Koom Khan rode into town. He was at the head of a picked squadron of the recent rebels—now loyal supporters of Aziza Nurmahal, as they shouted to the throng—and near the end of the cortège, astride donkeys, their hands bound behind their backs and their heads facing the animals' tails, came Mr. Preserved Higgins and The Honorable Tollemache Wade—butts for the crude jests of the populace, also for a number of decrepit lemons and melons and eggs.

A great wave of joy surged from end to end of the capital: the turmoil and strife was over, once more peace had returned to the land, and even the Sheik-ul-Islam, who had sneaked back into town, none knew when and why, gave pious and hypocritical thanks that Khizr, the green star of peace and plenty, was again blessing Tamerlanistan, quoting learnedly from the Koran, proving his point by quoting about ten chapters from the Marah al-Falah, and then reënforcing his opinion by five hundred lines from the Sharh Ayni.

Joy and excitement and an impromptu holiday—the noisy holiday of Asia—with tents and ambling coffee houses, cook shops and lemonade stands, toy booths and merry-go-rounds jumping from the ground like mushrooms—and bear leaders and ballad singers,

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 ape leaders, fakirs, buffoons, jugglers, fortune tellers, snake charmers, and dancing boys in women's attire.

And, also impromptu, the love-making of Asia which is a trifle indelicate to Western ears and prejudices; the correct method of procedure being for the gallant man to tilt his turban or fur cap to a rakish angle—to show that he is a fast man—to tease his mustaches to the sharp points of a single, well-waxed hair, to shoulder his ashen stick, and to stalk about with a nonchalant, devil-may-care air until he sees a lady whose eyes seem to roll invitingly behind her veil. Then a graceful attitude and soft words:

“O Bride! O Female Pilgrim! O Dispenser of Delights!”—and whatever else the gallant man may have to say.

There is of course the chance that the Dispenser of Delights will refuse to dispense the same and will reply with some such little thing as: “May Allah cut out thy heart and feed it to the most unclean pigs of Syria! Curse thee for an unbelieving and thrice-unclean dog!” or: “Verily I declare that thy ancestry is rotten and thy manners deplorable! Verily I declare that thy female progenitors have been shameless and disreputable since the day of Allah's creation!”

Then the man's retort, with a proper drawl: “Wah, ya'l aguz—Ho, Old Woman!” and he would move away very quickly. For the temper of the fair ones of Asia is short and they may tell things about a man and his ancestry which never can be translated word for word into English—for reasons.

Joy and excitement, and cheers for Gulabian, for Koom Khan, for the princess, for Al Nakia!

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Peace!

Friend would meet friend and greet each other with all the extravagance of the East, throwing themselves upon each other's breasts, placing right arm over left shoulder, squeezing like wrestlers, with intermittent hugs and caresses, then laying cheek delicately against cheek and flat palm against palm, at the same time making the loud, smacking noise of many kisses in the air.

When the prisoners were brought into the audience hall. Hector was utterly astonished to recognize his brother.

“Tollemache!” he cried. “Why—Tollemache …”

Then, quickly, he suppressed the words that were rising to his lips. He was here as the regent of Tamerlanistan and the other as a rebel—a slightly amused, slightly amazed, and altogether coolly collected rebel, in contrast to Mr. Preserved Higgins who believed, to quote his own words, in “bullyin' the other feller before the other feller gets a chance to bully you.”

“I s'y!” he shouted. “Wot's all this 'ere muckin' about mean—mykin' me ride a donkey 'indside-front, and pokin' me at the point of a bleedin' lance all over this 'ere plurry, second-'and continent? I'm goin' to raise a 'ell of a stink with the British government, I am. I'm a British subject—and no lousy, card-cheatin' …”

“Shut up, you damned cad!” whispered Tollemache. “I tell you that …”

And then he was suddenly silent. For the

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 Princess Aziza Nurmahal, accompanied by Ayesha Zemzem, had entered the audience hall and was looking at him.

Long she looked, and steadily.

Hector Wade was in a quandary. By all the laws and rules of the land, it was his duty to sentence these two men to death.

Tollemache was his brother.

He said so to the princess, in a whisper.

“He is my brother, Aziza Nurmahal.”

“Then he, too, is of the blood of the Gengizkhani—”

“Yes …”

“And,” continued the princess, dreamily, “he, too, is the 'Expected One' …”

Hector had not heard her last remark. He did not know what to do or say.

Tollemache! His brother! He himself, on the other hand, was the regent of Tamerlanistan. There was his responsibility, his duty, toward the land, the princess.

His duty! Here it flooded through the mists of his brotherly affection—for he loved Tollemache, card scandal or no card scandal—like a naked, lonely hulk on a gray sea.

Yes, whatever his love for his brother, his duty came first. He couldn't help Tollemache. No! He couldn't help him—he repeated the words to himself over and over again—he couldn't help him, and no mistake.

He rose, about to pass sentence; and then, before he could speak, the princess raised her scepter.

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“The durbar is over,” she said, in a clear, ringing voice.

“But,” protested Koom Khan, “the prisoners—the two sahebs—what punishment …”

“I am the autocrat of this land,” said the princess, “remember that, Koom Khan. Remember, too”—touching the ancient English blade which connected the fate of her clan with that of the Wades of Dealle—“that once I was forced to forget that I am a woman and …”

“I remember,” said Koom Khan, hastily, looking at the scar which disfigured his wrist.

“Good! The durbar is over. Let Higgins saheb be put in a stout prison. And as to the other saheb—I—I forgive him! For he, too, is of the Gengizkhani blood! His coming, too, was spoken of in the old prophecy—the wooing of the blades!”

And it was Jane who, being a woman and in love, thus wise beyond her years, put the right construction on the strange scene.

“Dad,” she said to Mr. Warburton, “the little princess is in love with Tollemache Wade. She practically told him so.”

“Most indelicate,” commented her father, who considered all the softer emotions as rather immoral.

“I don't know, dad. It's the custom in the Orient for the woman to make the advances to the man.”

“Can't say that, in this respect, the Orient differs so very much from the Occident,” rejoined her father cynically.

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Later during the day Hector talked to his brother in private.

He remembered how, years earlier, Tollemache had been his boyhood hero. From cricket to rugger, from bird-nesting to running with the harrier hounds, from single-stick fencing to a bout with the gloves, there was nothing which the other had not been able to do. Even afterwards, when both brothers belonged to the Dragoons and when Tollemache had got into debt. Hector had not lost his admiration, had often interceded for him with their father.

That card scandal?

Why—Hector said to himself that he understood. The temptation had been terrible, there had been that chorus girl—Gwendolyn something-or-other. Why, it would be all right, if Tollemache would only make a clean breast of it, if he would only play the game!

He put it into words, impulsively:

“Tollemache! I'm no jolly good at this sentimental stuff …”

“Nor I. Rather un-English, what?”

“Rather. But—I say—I'm fond of you, you know—”

“Thanks, old chap, and right back at you!”

“Then why aren't you frank with me? Why don't you 'fess up?”

“Nothing to 'fess up,” smiled Tollemache. “Upon my word, I had no idea it was you who were regent here—Al Nakia—and all that sort of drivel. That cad of a Higgins never told me that …”

“I'm not speaking about that, Tollemache. I mean the old card scandal!”

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The smile faded from the older man's lips.

“You believe it was I who cheated, don't you?”

“Of course!” came the blunt reply.

“Well—by God—though neither you nor the guv'nor ever gave me a chance to explain—I didn't!”

“You—you …?”

“I—did—not!”

And, suddenly, Hector understood that Tollemache was speaking the truth.

“Who did—then …?” he stammered; and then: “By Jingo, I have it! It's clear—as clear as daylight! It was Higgins!”

“Higgins? Rot! He has enough of the ready to burn it in chunks. A thousand quid is nothing to him!”

“I know. But …”

And Hector told his brother how Mr. Preserved Higgins, via Babu Bansi and Gulabian had heard of the prophecy of the blades, of the Englishman who, according to it, would come out of the West to save Tamerlanistan.

“So he went ahead and found out the name of the English family—our family, Tollemache—the Wades of Dealle—and he came to our house.”

“Yes. I remember. Under the pretext that he wanted to buy or rent Dealle Castle, wasn't it? But—how did he find out that we were meant in the prophecy—even before we did ourselves?”

“I don't know. But he did. And—you see, he's Mr. Warburton's old enemy, and both are after land concessions, as you know—he decided to—oh—how would you put it?”

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“Get one of our family into his toils, what? Regular melodramatic style!”

“Exactly,” replied Hector. “After the scandal, he interviewed me, asked me to go to Asia for him. But I wouldn't play. I knocked him down. Then he got you. It's all perfectly clear.”

“Right-oh! Let's interview our amazing Cockney friend!”

They did, and they found Mr. Preserved Higgins at first inclined to bluster.

But Hector reminded him of the fact that he was regent of Tamerlanistan, and that a word to the executioner would …

“You wouldn't?” protested Mr. Preserved Higgins. “Ain't we both British gents? I s'y—look 'ere …”

“No use arguing,” said Hector. “Either you own up or …”

“Right-oh, cocky!” said Mr. Preserved Higgins, with that sudden and complete change of front which was one of his main characteristics and which, often, in the past, had given him the victory in financial battles. “You 'ave me by the short 'air on my neck. I own up, see? It was me cheated at cards. I used to myke oodles of tin at it, years back, when I was in South Africa and still belonged to these 'ere downtrodden masses.”

Pressed to be more explicit, he told how, on the day of the old Ameer's death, his faithful agent, the Babu Bansi, had cabled him, had followed it up by other wires which detailed the story of the prophecy and the blades, and that, for the reasons which the

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 brothers had already guessed, he had made the acquaintance of their father, the earl, under the pretext of renting Dealle Castle.

“But how did you find out that it was our family which was meant by the prophecy?” demanded Tollemache.

“Nothin' to that, old cocky wax! The Babu, 'e cybles me a description of the escutcheon wot is on this 'ere old English blyde wot the princess 'as, and so I and a sandy-'aired gent wot's my confidential secretary does a bit of lookin' through the peerage and the orfice of 'eraldry, until we finds this 'ere escutcheon—a double-'eaded eagle, ain't it? You know the rest!”

“I do,” smiled Hector, “but you don't!”

“Wot you mean?”

“That you are going to cable over to London, to that secretary of yours, and have him put a full page advertisement in all the London dailies and the more important provincial papers, with a complete confession of what you did.”

“I won't,” said Mr. Preserved Higgins.

“You will,” rejoined Hector, pointing through the iron-barred window at the palace courtyard where Wahab al-Shaitan, resplendent in his crimson-and-black robe, his two-handed sword across his supple shoulders, was saying light words of love to Kumar Zaida, the little slave girl.

“Right-oh!” said Mr. Preserved Higgins. “I will!”

Thus it happened that a sandy-haired gentleman, the next morning, looking from the fly-specked window, at the gray, coiling streets of London City,

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 went to the door, opened and read a lengthy cablegram, whistled through his teeth, and said to himself that the guv'nor must have gone batty in his bloomin' old belfry.

But, knowing Mr. Preserved Higgins of old, he followed the instructions to the letter, and caused Fleet Street and Bishopsgate Street and Lombard Street to zum with the greatest financial sensation of a decade.

“Extry—extry!” shrilled the newsboys. “Mr. 'Iggins, the fymous capitalist, mykes full confession … cheated at cards … extry—extry!”

It was a few days later that Hector Wade, walking through the palace garden arm in arm with Jane, suddenly stopped and put his finger on his lips.

“Listen!” he whispered.

For, from behind an immense, gnarled deodar tree, drifted voices, the princess' and Tollemache's, speaking in soft, gliding Persian which Hector translated to Jane in an undertone.

“Aziza Nurmahal!” said Tollemache, “I need thee, I need thee so! The thought of thee going out of my life—God!—I cannot stand it. I could not face existence without thee!”

And the princess' answer:

“And I, too, best beloved, I need thee. Without thee, life would be but the dust of the rose petal, with the sweetness, the perfume, gone forever! Without thee, I shall be as lonely as the gray cliff swallow! I need thee, dear, as thou needest me. Thou art the Expected One! Thou and I, together, will finally fulfill the ancient prophecy—the wooing of blades!”

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And it was of the wooing of blades that, not many days later, when the palace and the town, the mosques and bazaars and caravanserais rang with shouts of joy to celebrate the double wedding, Tollemache marrying the princess, and Hector marrying Jane Warburton, Ayesha Zemzem, the old nurse, spoke to Koom Khan and Gulabian.

“Two heads are better than one,” she said, “when it comes to deal with such crafty rogues as you two—not to mention the governor of the western marches and Musa Al-Mutasim and many other scoundrels. The two Al Nakias! The two Expected Ones! Brothers and friends! And together rulers of this land! A brave wooing of blades indeed!”

“And a wooing of hearts,” said Kumar Zaida, the little slave girl, “a wooing of bodies and …”

“Silence!” shrilled the nurse. “Silence, shameless daughter of a pimple! Thou art too young to know aught of love!”

“And thou too old!” came the reply, as Kumar Zaida ducked and ran to escape the nurse's stick.

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many days later—the day following the departure of Mr. Ezra Warburton and Mr. Preserved Higgins who, enemies to the last, had interviewed Hector individually and separately on the question of the “concessions,” to be met with the reply: “I'll grant no concessions to anybody. Tamerlanistan will be developed. But not with foreign money, nor for foreign profit. Through our own work—for our own profit!” … not many days later, the princess, turning to Hector at the end of the daily durbar, said that she was a little depressed.

“About what?” asked Hector.

“About Hajji Akhbar Khan, Itizad el-Dowleh. He sent thee here—and thus, indirectly, thy brother! His hand was the hand of benevolence and wisdom from the beginning. Yet has he never returned from the far places—has he never explained why he sent thee as he did send thee—without telling thee word of the ancient prophecy—why he let thee go blindfolded, to battle against Fate!”

And the answer came, a week or two afterwards, in a letter delivered by a messenger who came mysteriously and disappeared mysteriously.

It bore neither date nor place, and read as follows:

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34 on Sundays preached—a religious revelation, which was not at all displeasing to this master of boys who were inclined to be anything but home-loving and conservative. Could he bring a reference from where he now was? He could.

Mr. Squires proceeded to explain that this hotel was very strict. Too many boys, on account of the scenes and the show here, the contact with undue luxury to which they were not accustomed—though these were not the words used by Mr. Squires—were inclined to lose their heads and go wrong. He was constantly being forced to discharge boys who, because they made a little extra money, didn't know how to conduct themselves. He must have boys who were willing, civil, prompt, courteous to everybody. They must be clean and neat about their persons and clothes and show up promptly—on the dot—and in good condition for the work every day. And any boy who got to thinking that because he made a little money he could flirt with anybody or talk back, or go off on parties at night, and then not show up on time or too tired to be quick and bright, needn't think that he would be here long. He would be fired, and that promptly. He would not tolerate any nonsense. That must be understood now, once and for all.

Clyde nodded assent often and interpolated a few eager “yes, sirs” and “no, sirs,” and assured him at the last that it was the furtherest thing from his thoughts and temperament to dream of any such high crimes and misdemeanors as he had outlined. Mr. Squires then proceeded to explain that this hotel only paid fifteen dollars a month and board—at the servant's table in the basement—to any bell-boy at any time. But, and this information came as a most amazing revelation to Clyde, every guest for whom any of these boys did anything—carried a bag or delivered a pitcher of water or did anything—gave him a tip, and often quite a liberal one—a dime, fifteen cents, a quarter, sometimes more. And these tips, as Mr. Squires explained, taken all together, averaged from four to six dollars a day—not less and sometimes more—most amazing pay, as Clyde now realized. His heart gave an enormous bound and was near to suffocating him at the mere mention of so large a sum. From four to six dollars! Why, that was twenty-eight to forty-two dollars a week! He could scarcely believe it. And that in addition to the fifteen dollars a month and board. And there was no charge, as Mr. Squires now explained, for the handsome uniforms the boys wore. But it might not be worn or taken out of the place. His hours, as Mr. Squires now pro-

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The function of muscular tissue is to produce movement of parts by contraction. Contraction may or may not be under the control of the will. The action of voluntary muscles is consciously controlled; involuntary muscle is not so controlled, and a person is usually not cognizant of its activities. These two types of muscle tissue differ also in microscopic structure, form, and distribution. They are alike in that the structural unit in each case is the muscle fiber, which is a cell highly differentiated for the function of contraction.

Involuntary, or nonstriated, muscles are found in the walls of the digestive tract, arteries and veins, bronchial tubes, uterus, bladder, in the glands, etc. The fibers are either more or less scattered or disposed in sheets. Each fiber is an elongated, spindle-shaped cell, containing a single, centrally located nucleus, and a longitudinally striated cytoplasm. They are under the control of the sympathetic nervous system, and they contract much less rapidly than voluntary muscles.

The striated muscle tissue comprises the skeletal muscles for the movement of the arms, legs, trunk, jaw, and head, the eye muscles for rotating the eyeballs, the muscles of the face, etc. With the exception of the striated muscles of the esophagus, the somewhat differently constructed muscles of the heart, and a few others, striated muscles are voluntary. The fibers are very long as compared with their diameter. The sarcolemma, or thin outer wall of the fiber, incloses the sarcoplasm, in


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 ceeded to explain, would be as follows: On Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, he was to work from six in the morning until noon, and then, with six hours off, from six in the evening until midnight. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, he need only work from noon until six, thus giving him each alternate afternoon or evening to himself. But all his meals were to be taken outside his working hours and he was to report promptly in uniform for line-up and inspection by his superior exactly ten minutes before the regular hours of his work began at each watch.

As for some other things which were in his mind at the time, Mr. Squires said nothing. There were others, as he knew, who would speak for him. Instead he went on to add, and then quite climactically for Clyde at that time, who had been sitting as one in a daze: “I suppose you are ready to go to work now, aren't you?”

“Yes, sir, yes, sir,” he replied.

“Very good!” Then he got up and opened the door which had shut them in. “Oscar,” he called to a boy seated at the head of the bell-boy bench, to which a tallish, rather oversized youth in a tight, neat-looking uniform responded with alacrity. “Take this young man here—Clyde Griffiths is your name, isn't it?—up to the wardrobe on the twelfth and see if Jacobs can find a suit to fit. But if he can't, tell him to alter it by to-morrow. I think the one Silsbee wore ought to be about right for him.”

Then he turned to his assistant at the desk who was at the moment looking on. “I'm giving him a trial, anyhow,” he commented. “Have one of the boys coach him a little to-night or whenever he starts in. Go ahead, Oscar,” he called to the boy in charge of Clyde. “He's green at this stuff, but I think he'll do,” he added to his assistant, as Clyde and Oscar disappeared in the direction of one of the elevators. Then he walked off to have Clyde's name entered upon the payroll.

In the meantime, Clyde, in tow of this new mentor, was listening to a line of information such as never previously had come to his ears anywhere.

“You needn't be frightened, if you ain't never worked at anything like dis before,” began this youth, and who hailed from Jersey City, New Jersey, exotic lingo, gestures and all. He was tall, vigorous, sandy-haired, freckled, genial and voluble. They had entered upon an elevator labeled “employees.” “It ain't so hard. I got my first job in Buffalo t'ree years go and I

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A LIKELY STORY. By Author:William Frend De Morgan, Author of "Joseph Vance," etc.

MAID'S MONEY. By Mrs., Author of "Folly Corner," etc.

LAURA. By Author:Caroline Susan Theodora Grosvenor                                                      , Author of "Bands of Orion," etc.

JUGGERNAUT. By Author:Edward Frederic Benson, Author of "Account Rendered," etc.

THE SECRET GARDEN. By Author:Frances Hodgson Burnett, Author of "The Shuttle," etc. Illustrated by Author:Charles Robinson.

MRS. DRUMMOND'S VOCATION. By Author:Mark Ryce

THE PILGRIM KAMANITA. By Author:Karl Adolph Gjellerup

HER HUSBAND'S COUNTRY. BY Author:Sybil Gwendolen Spottiswoode, Author of "Marcia in Germany," etc.

A PORTENTOUS HISTORY. By Author:Alfred Tennyson

LOVE LIKE THE SEA. By, Author of "Tillers of the Soil," etc.

ESSENCE OF HONEYMOON. By Author:Harry Perry Robinson, Author of "Of Distinguished Animals."

THE PATRICIAN. By Author:John Galsworthy, Author of "The Country House," etc.

JOHN CHRISTOPHER IN PARIS. By Author:Romain Rolland

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sun streamed through the bay-window of a "best" bedroom in the Warden's house, and glorified the pale crayon-portraits on the wall, the dimity curtains, the old fresh chintz. He invaded the many trunks which—all painted Z. D.—gaped, in various stages of excavation, around the room. The doors of the huge wardrobe stood, like the doors of Janus' temple in time of war, majestically open; and the sun seized this opportunity of exploring the mahogany recesses. But the carpet, which had faded under his immemorial visitations, was now almost entirely hidden from him, hidden under layers of fair fine linen, layers of silk, brocade, satin, chiffon, muslin. All the colours of the rainbow, materialised by modistes, were there. Stacked on chairs were I know not what of sachets, glove-cases, fan-cases. There were innumerable packages in silver-paper and pink ribands. There was a pyramid of band-boxes. There was a virgin forest of boot-trees. And rustling quickly hither and thither, in and out of this profusion, with armfuls of finery, was an obviously French maid. Alert, unerring, like a swallow she dipped and

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 darted. Nothing escaped her, and she never rested. She had the air of the born unpacker—swift and firm, yet withal tender. Scarce had her arms been laden but their loads were lying lightly between shelves or tightly in drawers. To calculate, catch, distribute, seemed in her but a single process. She was one of those who are born to make chaos cosmic.

Insomuch that ere the loud chapel-clock tolled another hour all the trunks had been sent empty away. The carpet was unflecked by any scrap of silver-paper. From the mantelpiece, photographs of Zuleika surveyed the room with a possessive air. Zuleika's pincushion, a-bristle with new pins, lay on the dimity-flounced toilet-table, and round it stood a multitude of multiform glass vessels, domed, all of them, with dull gold, on which Z. D., in zianites and diamonds, was encrusted. On a small table stood a great casket of malachite, initialled in like fashion. On another small table stood Zuleika's library. Both books were in covers of dull gold. On the back of one cover, in beryls, was encrusted; on the back of the other, , in amethysts, beryls, chrysoprases, and garnets. And Zuleika's great cheval-glass stood ready to reflect her. Always it travelled with her, in a great case specially made for it. It was framed in ivory, and of fluted ivory were the slim columns it swung between. Of gold were its twin sconces, and four tall tapers stood in each of them.

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 The door opened, and the Warden, with hospitable words, left his grand-daughter at the threshold.

Zuleika wandered to her mirror. "Undress me, Mélisande," she said. Like all who are wont to appear by night before the public, she had the habit of resting towards sunset.

Presently Mélisande withdrew. Her mistress, in a white peignoir tied with a blue sash, lay in a great chintz chair, gazing out of the bay-window. The quadrangle below was very beautiful, with its walls of rugged grey, its cloisters, its grass carpet. But to her it was of no more interest than if it had been the rattling court-yard to one of those hotels in which she spent her life. She saw it, but heeded it not. She seemed to be thinking of herself, or of something she desired, or of some one she had never met. There was ennui, and there was wistfulness, in her gaze. Yet one would have guessed these things to be transient—to be no more than the little shadows that sometimes pass between a bright mirror and the brightness it reflects.

Zuleika was not strictly beautiful. Her eyes were a trifle large, and their lashes longer than they need have been. An anarchy of small curls was her chevelure, a dark upland of misrule, every hair asserting its rights over a not discreditable brow. For the rest, her features were not at all original. They seemed to have been derived

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 rather from a gallimaufry of familiar models. From Madame la Marquise de Saint-Ouen came the shapely tilt of the nose. The mouth was a mere replica of Cupid's bow, lacquered scarlet and strung with the littlest pearls. No apple-tree, no wall of peaches, had not been robbed, nor any Tyrian rose-garden, for the glory of Miss Dobson's cheeks. Her neck was imitation-marble. Her hands and feet were of very mean proportions. She had no waist to speak of.

Yet, though a Greek would have railed at her asymmetry, and an Elizabethan have called her "gipsy," Miss Dobson now, in the midst of the Edvardian Era, was the toast of two hemispheres. Late in her 'teens she had become an orphan and a governess. Her grandfather had refused her appeal for a home or an allowance, on the ground that he would not be burdened with the upshot of a marriage which he had once forbidden and not yet forgiven. Lately, however, prompted by curiosity or by remorse, he had asked her to spend a week or so of his declining years with him. And she, "resting" between two engagements—one at Hammerstein's Victoria, N.Y.C., the other at the Folies Bergères, Paris—and having never been in Oxford, had so far let bygones be bygones as to come and gratify the old man's whim.

It may be that she still resented his indifference to those early struggles which, even now, she shuddered to recall. For a governess' life she had

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 been, indeed, notably unfit. Hard she had thought it, that penury should force her back into the school-room she was scarce out of, there to champion the sums and maps and conjugations she had never tried to master. Hating her work, she had failed signally to pick up any learning from her little pupils, and had been driven from house to house, a sullen and most ineffectual maiden. The sequence of her situations was the swifter by reason of her pretty face. Was there a grown-up son, always he fell in love with her, and she would let his eyes trifle boldly with hers across the dinner-table. When he offered her his hand, she would refuse it—not because she "knew her place," but because she did not love him. Even had she been a good teacher, her presence could not have been tolerated thereafter. Her corded trunk, heavier by another packet of billets-doux and a month's salary in advance, was soon carried up the stairs of some other house.

It chanced that she came, at length, to be governess in a large family that had Gibbs for its name and Notting Hill for its background. Edward, the eldest son, was a clerk in the city, who spent his evenings in the practice of amateur conjuring. He was a freckled youth, with hair that bristled in places where it should have lain smooth, and he fell in love with Zuleika duly, at first sight, during high-tea. In the course of the evening, he sought to win her admiration by a display of all

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 his tricks. These were familiar to this household, and the children had been sent to bed, the mother was dozing, long before the'séance was at an end. But Miss Dobson, unaccustomed to any gaieties, sat fascinated by the young man's sleight of hand, marvelling that a top-hat could hold so many gold-fish, and a handkerchief turn so swiftly into a silver florin. All that night, she lay wide awake, haunted by the miracles he had wrought. Next evening, when she asked him to repeat them, "Nay," he whispered, "I cannot bear to deceive the girl I love. Permit me to explain the tricks." So he explained them. His eyes sought hers across the bowl of gold-fish, his fingers trembled as he taught her to manipulate the magic canister. One by one, she mastered the paltry secrets. Her respect for him waned with every revelation. He complimented her on her skill. "I could not do it more neatly myself!" he said. "Oh, dear Miss Dobson, will you but accept my hand, all these things shall be yours—the cards, the canister, the gold-fish, the demon egg-cup—all yours!" Zuleika, with ravishing coyness, answered that if he would give her them now, she would "think it over." The swain consented, and at bed-time she retired with the gift under her arm. In the light of her bedroom candle Marguerite hung not in greater ecstasy over the jewel-casket than hung Zuleika over the box of tricks. She clasped her hands over the tremendous possibilities it held for

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 her—manumission from her bondage, wealth, fame, power. Stealthily, so soon as the house slumbered, she packed her small outfit, embedding therein the precious gift. Noiselessly, she shut the lid of her trunk, corded it, shouldered it, stole down the stairs with it. Outside—how that chain had grated! and her shoulder, how it was aching!—she soon found a cab. She took a night's sanctuary in some railway-hotel. Next day, she moved into a small room in a lodging-house off the Edgware Road, and there for a whole week she was sedulous in the practice of her tricks. Then she inscribed her name on the books of a "Juvenile Party Entertainments Agency."

The Christmas holidays were at hand, and before long she got an engagement. It was a great evening for her. Her repertory was, it must be confessed, old and obvious; but the children, in deference to their hostess, pretended not to know how the tricks were done, and assumed their prettiest airs of wonder and delight. One of them even pretended to be frightened, and was led howling from the room. In fact, the whole thing went off splendidly. The hostess was charmed, and told Zuleika that a glass of lemonade would be served to her in the hall. Other engagements soon followed. Zuleika was very, very happy. I cannot claim for her that she had a genuine passion for her art. The true conjurer finds his guerdon the consciousness of work done perfectly and for

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 Looking across the road, he saw, to his amazement, great beads of perspiration glistening on the brows of those Emperors. He trembled, and hurried away. That evening, in Common Room, he told what he had seen; and no amount of polite scepticism would convince him that it was but the hallucination of one who had been reading too much Mommsen. He persisted that he had seen what he described. It was not until two days had elapsed that some credence was accorded him.

Yes, as the landau rolled by, sweat started from the brows of the Emperors. They, at least, foresaw the peril that was overhanging Oxford, and they gave such warning as they could. Let that be remembered to their credit. Let that incline us to think more gently of them. In their lives we know, they were infamous, some of them—"nihil non commiserunt stupri, saevitiae, impietatis." But are they too little punished, after all? Here in Oxford, exposed eternally and inexorably to heat and frost, to the four winds that lash them and the rains that wear them away, they are expiating, in effigy, the abominations of their pride and cruelty and lust. Who were lechers, they are without bodies; who were tyrants, they are crowned never but with crowns of snow; who made themselves even with the gods, they are by American visitors frequently mistaken for the Twelve Apostles. It is but a little way down the road that the two Bishops perished for their faith,

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 and even now we do never pass the spot without a tear for them. Yet how quickly they died in the flames! To these Emperors, for whom none weeps, time will give no surcease. Surely, it is sign of some grace in them that they rejoiced not, this bright afternoon, in the evil that was to befall the city of their penance.

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 its own sake. Lucre and applause are not necessary to him. If he were set down, with the materials of his art, on a desert island, he would yet be quite happy. He would not cease to produce the barber's-pole from his mouth. To the indifferent winds he would still speak his patter, and even in the last throes of starvation would not eat his live rabbit or his gold-fish. Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for a man's foot-print. She was, indeed, far too human a creature to care much for art. I do not say that she took her work lightly. She thought she had genius, and she liked to be told that this was so. But mainly she loved her work as a means of mere self-display. The frank admiration which, into whatsoever house she entered, the grown-up sons flashed on her; their eagerness to see her to the door; their impressive way of putting her into her omnibus—these were the things she revelled in. She was a nymph to whom men's admiration was the greater part of life. By day, whenever she went into the streets, she was conscious that no man passed her without a stare; and this consciousness gave a sharp zest to her outings. Sometimes she was followed to her door—crude flattery which she was too innocent to fear. Even when she went into the haberdasher's to make some little purchase of tape or riband, or into the grocer's—for she was an epicure in her humble way—to buy a tin of

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 potted meat for her supper, the homage of the young men behind the counter did flatter and exhilarate her. As the homage of men became for her, more and more, a matter of course, the more subtly necessary was it to her happiness. The more she won of it, the more she treasured it. She was alone in the world, and it saved her from any moment of regret that she had neither home nor friends. For her the streets that lay around her had no squalor, since she paced them always in the gold nimbus of her fascinations. Her bedroom seemed not mean nor lonely to her, since the little square of glass, nailed above the wash-stand, was ever there to reflect her face. Thereinto, indeed, she was ever peering. She would droop her head from side to side, she would bend it forward and see herself from beneath her eyelashes, then tilt it back and watch herself over her supercilious chin. And she would smile, frown, pout, languish—let all the emotions hover upon her face; and always she seemed to herself lovelier than she had ever been.

Yet was there nothing Narcissine in her spirit. Her love for her own image was not cold æstheticism. She valued that image not for its own sake, but for sake of the glory it always won for her. In the little remote music-hall, where she was soon appearing nightly as an "early turn," she reaped glory in a nightly harvest. She could feel that all the gallery-boys, because of her, were

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 scornful of the sweethearts wedged between them, and she knew that she had but to say "Will any gentleman in the audience be so good as to lend me his hat?" for the stalls to rise as one man and rush towards the platform. But greater things were in store for her. She was engaged at two halls in the West End. Her horizon was fast receding and expanding. Homage became nightly tangible in bouquets, rings, brooches—things acceptable and (luckier than their donors) accepted. Even Sunday was not barren for Zuleika: modish hostesses gave her postprandially to their guests. Came that Sunday night, notanda candidissimo calculo! when she received certain guttural compliments which made absolute her vogue and enabled her to command, thenceforth, whatever terms she asked for.

Already, indeed, she was rich. She was living at the most exorbitant hotel in all Mayfair. She had innumerable gowns and no necessity to buy jewels; and she also had, which pleased her most, the fine cheval-glass I have described. At the close of the Season, Paris claimed her for a month's engagement. Paris saw her and was prostrate. Boldini did a portrait of her. Jules Bloch wrote a song about her; and this, for a whole month, was howled up and down the cobbled alleys of Montmartre. And all the little dandies were mad for "la Zuleika." The jewellers of the Rue de la Paix soon had nothing left to put in their windows

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 everything had been bought for "la Zuleika." For a whole month, baccarat was not played at the Jockey Club—every member had succumbed to a nobler passion. For a whole month, the whole demi-monde was forgotten for one English virgin. Never, even in Paris, had a woman triumphed so. When the day came for her departure, the city wore such an air of sullen mourning as it had not worn since the Prussians marched to its Elysée. Zuleika, quite untouched, would not linger in the conquered city. Agents had come to her from every capital in Europe, and, for a year, she ranged, in triumphal nomady, from one capital to another. In Berlin, every night, the students escorted her home with torches. Prince Vierfünfsechs-Siebenachtneun offered her his hand, and was condemned by the Kaiser to six months' confinement in his little castle. In Yildiz Kiosk, the tyrant who still throve there conferred on her the Order of Chastity, and offered her the central couch in his seraglio. She gave her performance in the Quirinal, and, from the Vatican, the Pope launched against her a Bull which fell utterly flat. In Petersburg, the Grand Duke Salamander Salamandrovitch fell enamoured of her. Of every article in the apparatus of her conjuring-tricks he caused a replica to be made in finest gold. These treasures he presented to her in that great malachite casket which now stood on the little table in her room; and thenceforth it was with these that she

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 performed her wonders. They did not mark the limit of the Grand Duke's generosity. He was for bestowing on Zuleika the half of his immensurable estates. The Grand Duchess appealed to the Tzar. Zuleika was conducted across the frontier, by an escort of love-sick Cossacks. On the Sunday before she left Madrid, a great bull-fight was held in her honour. Fifteen bulls received the coup-de-grâce, and Alvarez, the matador of matadors, died in the arena with her name on his lips. He had tried to kill the last bull without taking his eyes off la divina señorita. A prettier compliment had never been paid her, and she was immensely pleased with it. For that matter, she was immensely pleased with everything. She moved proudly to the incessant music of a pæan, aye! of a pæan that was always crescendo.

Its echoes followed her when she crossed the Atlantic, till they were lost in the louder, deeper, more blatant pæan that rose for her from the shores beyond. All the stops of that "mighty organ, many-piped," the New York press, were pulled out simultaneously, as far as they could be pulled, in Zuleika's honour. She delighted in the din. She read every line that was printed about her, tasting her triumph as she had never tasted it before. And how she revelled in the Brobdingnagian drawings of her, which, printed in nineteen colours, towered between the columns or sprawled across them! There she was, measuring herself

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 back to back with the Statue of Liberty; scudding through the firmament on a comet, whilst a crowd of tiny men in evening-dress stared up at her from the terrestrial globe; peering through a microscope held by Cupid over a diminutive Uncle Sam; teaching the American Eagle to stand on its head; and doing a hundred-and-one other things—whatever suggested itself to the fancy of native art. And through all this iridescent maze of symbolism were scattered many little slabs of realism. At home, on the street, Zuleika was the smiling target of all snap-shooters, and all the snap-shots were snapped up by the press and reproduced with annotations: Zuleika Dobson walking on Broadway in the sables gifted her by Grand Duke Salamander—she says "You can bounce blizzards in them"; Zuleika Dobson yawning over a love-letter from millionaire Edelweiss; relishing a cup of clam-broth—she says "They don't use clams out there"; ordering her maid to fix her a warm bath; finding a split in the gloves she has just drawn on before starting for the musicale given in her honour by Mrs. Suetonius X. Meistersinger, the most exclusive woman in New York; chatting at the telephone to Miss Camille Van Spook, the best-born girl in New York; laughing over the recollection of a compliment made her by George Abimelech Post, the best-groomed man in New York; meditating a new trick; admonishing

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 ing [sic] a waiter who has upset a cocktail over her skirt; having herself manicured; drinking tea in bed. Thus was Zuleika enabled daily to be, as one might say, a spectator of her own wonderful life. On her departure from New York, the papers spoke no more than the truth when they said she had had "a lovely time." The further she went West—millionaire Edelweiss had loaned her his private car—the lovelier her time was. Chicago drowned the echoes of New York; final Frisco dwarfed the headlines of Chicago. Like one of its own prairie-fires, she swept the country from end to end. Then she swept back, and sailed for England. She was to return for a second season in the coming Fall. At present, she was, as I have said, "resting."

As she sat here in the bay-window of her room, she was not reviewing the splendid pageant of her past. She was a young person whose reveries never were in retrospect. For her the past was no treasury of distinct memories, all hoarded and classified, some brighter than others and more highly valued. All memories were for her but as the motes in one fused radiance that followed her and made more luminous the pathway of her future. She was always looking forward. She was looking forward now—that shade of ennui had passed from her face—to the week she was to spend in Oxford. A new city was a new toy to her, and—for it was youth's homage that she loved

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 best—this city of youths was a toy after her own heart.

Aye, and it was youths who gave homage to her most freely. She was of that high-stepping and flamboyant type that captivates youth most surely. Old men and men of middle age admired her, but she had not that flower-like quality of shyness and helplessness, that look of innocence, so dear to men who carry life's secrets in their heads. Yet Zuleika was very innocent, really. She was as pure as that young shepherdess Marcella, who, all unguarded, roved the mountains and was by all the shepherds adored. Like Marcella, she had given her heart to no man, had preferred none. Youths were reputed to have died for love of her, as Chrysostom died for love of the shepherdess; and she, like the shepherdess, had shed no tear. When Chrysostom was lying on his bier in the valley, and Marcella looked down from the high rock, Ambrosio, the dead man's comrade, cried out on her, upbraiding her with bitter words—"Oh basilisk of our mountains!" Nor do I think Ambrosio spoke too strongly. Marcella cared nothing for men's admiration, and yet, instead of retiring to one of those nunneries which are founded for her kind, she chose to rove the mountains, causing despair to all the shepherds. Zuleika, with her peculiar temperament, would have gone mad in a nunnery. "But," you may argue, "ought not she to have taken the veil, even at the cost of her reason, rather

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 than cause so much despair in the world? If Marcella was a basilisk, as you seem to think, how about Miss Dobson?" Ah, but Marcella knew quite well, boasted even, that she never would or could love any man. Zuleika, on the other hand, was a woman of really passionate fibre. She may not have had that conscious, separate, and quite explicit desire to be a mother with which modern playwrights credit every unmated member of her sex. But she did know that she could love. And, surely, no woman who knows that of herself can be rightly censured for not recluding herself from the world: it is only women without the power to love who have no right to provoke men's love.

Though Zuleika had never given her heart, strong in her were the desire and the need that it should be given. Whithersoever she had fared, she had seen nothing but youths fatuously prostrate to her—not one upright figure which she could respect. There were the middle-aged men, the old men, who did not bow down to her; but from middle-age, as from eld, she had a sanguine aversion. She could love none but a youth. Nor—though she herself, womanly, would utterly abase herself before her ideal—could she love one who fell prone before her. And before her all youths always did fall prone. She was an empress, and all youths were her slaves. Their bondage delighted her, as I have said. But no empress who has any pride can adore one of her slaves. Whom, then, could

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 proud Zuleika adore? It was a question which sometimes troubled her. There were even moments when, looking into her cheval-glass, she cried out against that arrangement in comely lines and tints which got for her the dulia she delighted in. To be able to love once—would not that be better than all the homage in the world? But would she ever meet whom, looking up to him, she could love—she, the omnisubjugant? Would she ever, ever meet him?

It was when she wondered thus, that the wistfulness came into her eyes. Even now, as she sat by the window, that shadow returned to them. She was wondering, shyly, had she met him at length? That young equestrian who had not turned to look at her; whom she was to meet at dinner tonight was it he? The ends of her blue sash lay across her lap, and she was lazily unravelling their fringes. "Blue and white!" she remembered. "They were the colours he wore round his hat." And she gave a little laugh of coquetry. She laughed, and, long after, her lips were still parted in a smile.

So did she sit, smiling, wondering, with the fringes of her sash between her fingers, while the sun sank behind the opposite wall of the quadanglerquadrangle [sic], and the shadows crept out across the grass, thirsty for the dew.

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clock in the Warden's drawing-room had just struck eight, and already the ducal feet were beautiful on the white bearskin hearthrug. So slim and long were they, of instep so nobly arched, that only with a pair of glazed ox-tongues on a breakfast-table were they comparable. Incomparable quite, the figure and face and vesture of him who ended in them.

The Warden was talking to him, with all the deference of elderly commoner to patrician boy. The other guests—an Oriel don and his wife—were listening with earnest smile and submissive droop, at a slight distance. Now and again, to put themselves at their ease, they exchanged in undertone a word or two about the weather.

"The young lady whom you may have noticed with me," the Warden was saying, "is my orphaned grand-daughter." (The wife of the Oriel don discarded her smile, and sighed, with a glance at the Duke, who was himself an orphan.) "She has come to stay with me." (The Duke glanced quickly round the room.) "I cannot think why she is not down yet." (The Oriel don fixed his

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 eyes on the clock, as though he suspected it of being fast.) "I must ask you to forgive her. She appears to be a bright, pleasant young woman."

"Married?" asked the Duke.

"No," said the Warden; and a cloud of annoyance crossed the boy's face. "No; she devotes her life entirely to good works."

"A hospital nurse?" the Duke murmured.

"No, Zuleika's appointed task is to induce delightful wonder rather than to alleviate pain. She performs conjuring-tricks."

"Not—not Miss Zuleika Dobson?" cried the Duke.

"Ah yes. I forgot that she had achieved some fame in the outer world. Perhaps she has already met you?"

"Never," said the young man coldly. "But of course I have heard of Miss Dobson. I did not know she was related to you."

The Duke had an intense horror of unmarried girls. All his vacations were spent in eluding them and their chaperons. That he should be confronted with one of them—with such an one of them!—in Oxford, seemed to him sheer violation of sanctuary. The tone, therefore, in which he said "I shall be charmed," in answer to the Warden's request that he would take Zuleika into dinner, was very glacial. So was his gaze when, a moment later, the young lady made her entry.

"She did not look like an orphan," said the

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 wife of the Oriel don, subsequently, on the way home. The criticism was a just one. Zuleika would have looked singular in one of those lowly double-files of straw-bonnets and drab cloaks which are so steadying a feature of our social system. Tall and lissom, she was sheathed from the bosom downwards in flamingo silk, and she was liberally festooned with emeralds. Her dark hair was not even strained back from her forehead and behind her ears, as an orphan's should be. Parted somewhere at the side, it fell in an avalanche of curls upon one eyebrow. From her right ear drooped heavily a black pearl, from her left a pink; and their difference gave an odd, bewildering witchery to the little face between.

Was the young Duke bewitched? Instantly, utterly. But none could have guessed as much from his cold stare, his easy and impassive bow. Throughout dinner, none guessed that his shirt-front was but the screen of a fierce warfare waged between pride and passion. Zuleika, at the foot of the table, fondly supposed him indifferent to her. Though he sat on her right, not one word or glance would he give her. All his conversation was addressed to the unassuming lady who sat on his other side, next to the Warden. Her he edified and flustered beyond measure by his insistent courtesy. Her husband, alone on the other side of the table, was mortified by his utter failure to engage Zuleika in small-talk. Zuleika

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 was sitting with her profile turned to him—the profile with the pink pearl—and was gazing full at the young Duke. She was hardly more affable than a cameo. "Yes," "No," "I don't know," were the only answers she would vouchsafe to his questions. A vague "Oh really?" was all he got for his timid little offerings of information. In vain he started the topic of modern conjuring-tricks as compared with the conjuring-tricks performed by the ancient Egyptians. Zuleika did not even say "Oh really?" when he told her about the metamorphosis of the bulls in the Temple of Osiris. He primed himself with a glass of sherry, cleared his throat. "And what," he asked, with a note of firmness, "did you think of our cousins across the water?" Zuleika said "Yes;" and then he gave in. Nor was she conscious that he ceased talking to her. At intervals throughout the rest of dinner, she murmured "Yes," and "No," and "Oh really?" though the poor little don was now listening silently to the Duke and the Warden.

She was in a trance of sheer happiness. At last, she thought, her hope was fulfilled—that hope which, although she had seldom remembered it in the joy of her constant triumphs, had been always lurking in her, lying near to her heart and chafing her, like the shift of sackcloth which that young brilliant girl, loved and lost of Giacopone di Todi, wore always in secret submission to her own

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 soul, under the fair soft robes and the rubies men saw on her. At last, here was the youth who would not bow down to her; whom, looking up to him, she could adore. She ate and drank automatically, never taking her gaze from him. She felt not one touch of pique at his behaviour. She was tremulous with a joy that was new to her, greater than any joy she had known. Her soul was as a flower in its opetide. She was in love. Rapt, she studied every lineament of the pale and perfect face—the brow from which bronze-coloured hair rose in tiers of burnished ripples; the large steel-coloured eyes, with their carven lids; the carven nose, and the plastic lips. She noted how long and slim were his fingers, and how slender his wrists. She noted the glint cast by the candles upon his shirt-front. The two large white pearls there seemed to her symbols of his nature. They were like two moons: cold, remote, radiant. Even when she gazed at the Duke's face, she was aware of them in her vision.

Nor was the Duke unconscious, as he seemed to be, of her scrutiny. Though he kept his head averse, he knew that always her eyes were watching him. Obliquely, he saw them; saw, too, the contour of the face, and the black pearl and the pink; could not blind himself, try as he would. And he knew that he was in love.

Like Zuleika herself, this young Duke was in love for the first time. Wooed though he had been by almost as many maidens as she by youths,

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 his heart, like hers, had remained cold. But he had never felt, as she had, the desire to love. He was not now rejoicing, as she was, in the sensation of first love; nay, he was furiously mortified by it, and struggled with all his might against it. He had always fancied himself secure against any so vulgar peril; always fancied that by him at least, the proud old motto of his family—"Pas si bête"—would not be belied. And I daresay, indeed, that had he never met Zuleika, the irresistible, he would have lived, and at a very ripe old age died, a dandy without reproach. For in him the dandiacal temper had been absolute hitherto, quite untainted and unruffled. He was too much concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else. Different from Zuleika, he cared for his wardrobe and his toilet-table not as a means to making others admire him the more, but merely as a means through which he could intensify, a ritual in which to express and realise, his own idolatry. At Eton he had been called "Peacock," and this nickname had followed him up to Oxford. It was not wholly apposite, however. For, whereas the peacock is a fool even among birds, the Duke had already taken (besides a particularly brilliant First in Mods) the Stanhope, the Newdigate, the Lothian, and the Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse. And these things he had achieved currente calamo, "wielding his pen," as Scott said of Byron, "with

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 the easy negligence of a nobleman." He was now in his third year of residence, and was reading, a little, for Literae Humaniores. There is no doubt that but for his untimely death he would have taken a particularly brilliant First in that school also.

For the rest, he had many accomplishments. He was adroit in the killing of all birds and fishes, stags and foxes. He played polo, cricket, racquets, chess, and billiards as well as such things can be played. He was fluent in all modern languages, had a very real talent in water-colour, and was accounted, by those who had had the privilege of hearing him, the best amateur pianist on this side of the Tweed. Little wonder, then, that he was idolised by the undergraduates of his day. He did not, however, honour many of them with his friendship. He had a theoretic liking for them as a class, as the "young barbarians all at play" in that little antique city; but individually they jarred on him, and he saw little of them. Yet he sympathised with them always, and, on occasion, would actively take their part against the dons. In the middle of his second year, he had gone so far that a College Meeting had to be held, and he was sent down for the rest of term. The Warden placed his own landau at the disposal of the illustrious young exile, who therein was driven to the station, followed by a long, vociferous procession of undergraduates in cabs. Now,

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 it happened that this was a time of political excitement in London. The Liberals, who were in power, had passed through the House of Commons a measure more than usually socialistic; and this measure was down for its second reading in the Lords on the very day that the Duke left Oxford, an exile. It was but a few weeks since he had taken his seat in the Lords; and this afternoon, for the want of anything better to do, he strayed in. The Leader of the House was already droning his speech for the bill, and the Duke found himself on one of the opposite benches. There sat his compeers, sullenly waiting to vote for a bill which every one of them detested. As the speaker subsided, the Duke, for the fun of the thing, rose. He made a long speech against the bill. His gibes at the Government were so scathing, so utterly destructive his criticism of the bill itself, so lofty and so irresistible the flights of his eloquence, that, when he resumed his seat, there was only one course left to the Leader of the House. He rose and, in a few husky phrases, moved that the bill "be read this day six months." All England rang with the name of the young Duke. He himself seemed to be the one person unmoved by his exploit. He did not re-appear in the Upper Chamber, and was heard to speak in slighting terms of its architecture, as well as of its upholstery. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister became so nervous that he procured for him, a month later, the

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 Sovereign's offer of a Garter which had just fallen vacant. The Duke accepted it. He was, I understand, the only undergraduate on whom this Order had ever been conferred. He was very much pleased with the insignia, and when, on great occasions, he wore them, no one dared say that the Prime Minister's choice was not fully justified. But you must not imagine that he cared for them as symbols of achievement and power. The dark blue riband, and the star scintillating to eight points, the heavy mantle of blue velvet, with its lining of taffeta and shoulder-knots of white satin, the crimson surcoat, the great embullioned tassels, and the chain of linked gold, and the plumes of ostrich and heron uprising from the black velvet hat—these things had for him little significance save as a fine setting, a finer setting than the most elaborate smoking-suit, for that perfection of aspect which the gods had given him. This was indeed the gift he valued beyond all others. He knew well, however, that women care little for a man's appearance, and that what they seek in a man is strength of character, and rank, and wealth. These three gifts the Duke had in a high degree, and he was by women much courted because of them. Conscious that every maiden he met was eager to be his Duchess, he had assumed always a manner of high austerity among maidens, and even if he had wished to flirt with Zuleika he would hardly have known how to do it. But he did not

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 wish to flirt with her. That she had bewitched him did but make it the more needful that he should shun all converse with her. It was imperative that he should banish her from his mind, quickly. He must not dilute his own soul's essence. He must not surrender to any passion his dandihood. The dandy must be celibate, cloistral; is, indeed, but a monk with a mirror for beads and breviary—an anchorite, mortifying his soul that his body may be perfect. Till he met Zuleika, the Duke had not known the meaning of temptation. He fought now, a St. Anthony, against the apparition. He would not look at her, and he hated her. He loved her, and he could not help seeing her. The black pearl and the pink seemed to dangle ever nearer and clearer to him, mocking him and beguiling. Inexpellable was her image.

So fierce was the conflict in him that his outward nonchalance gradually gave way. As dinner drew to its close, his conversation with the wife of the Oriel don flagged and halted. He sank, at length, into a deep silence. He sat with downcast eyes, utterly distracted.

Suddenly, something fell, plump! into the dark whirlpool of his thoughts. He started. The Warden was leaning forward, had just said something to him.

"I beg your pardon?" asked the Duke. Dessert, he noticed, was on the table, and he was paring an apple. The Oriel don was looking at him with

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 sympathy, as at one who had swooned and was just "coming to."

"Is it true, my dear Duke," the Warden repeated, "that you have been persuaded to play to-morrow evening at the Judas concert?"

"Ah yes, I am going to play something."

Zuleika bent suddenly forward, addressed him. "Oh," she cried, clasping her hands beneath her chin, "will you let me come and turn over the leaves for you?"

He looked her full in the face. It was like seeing suddenly at close quarters some great bright monument that one has long known only as a sun-caught speck in the distance. He saw the large violet eyes open to him, and their lashes curling to him; the vivid parted lips; and the black pearl, and the pink.

"You are very kind," he murmured, in a voice which sounded to him quite far away. "But I always play without notes."

Zuleika blushed. Not with shame, but with delirious pleasure. For that snub she would just then have bartered all the homage she had hoarded. This, she felt, was the climax. She would not outstay it. She rose, smiling to the wife of the Oriel don. Every one rose. The Oriel don held open the door, and the two ladies passed out of the room.

The Duke drew out his cigarette case. As he looked down at the cigarettes, he was vaguely

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 conscious of some strange phenomenon somewhere between them and his eyes. Foredone by the agitation of the past hour, he did not at once realise what it was that he saw. His impression was of something in bad taste, some discord in his costume a black pearl and a pink pearl in his shirt-front!

Just for a moment, absurdly over-estimating poor Zuleika's skill, he supposed himself a victim of legerdemain. Another moment, and the import of the studs revealed itself. He staggered up from his chair, covering his breast with one arm, and murmured that he was faint. As he hurried from the room, the Oriel don was pouring out a tumbler of water and suggesting burnt feathers. The Warden, solicitous, followed him into the hall. He snatched up his hat, gasping that he had spent a delightful evening—was very sorry—was subject to these attacks. Once outside, he took frankly to his heels.

At the corner of the Broad, he looked back over his shoulder. He had half expected a scarlet figure skimming in pursuit. There was nothing. He halted. Before him, the Broad lay empty beneath the moon. He went slowly, mechanically, to his rooms.

The high grim busts of the Emperors stared down at him, their faces more than ever tragically cavernous and distorted. They saw and read in that moonlight the symbols on his breast. As he

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 stood on his doorstep, waiting for the door to be opened, he must have seemed to them a thing for infinite compassion. For were they not privy to the doom that the morrow, or the morrow's morrow, held for him—held not indeed for him alone, yet for him especially, as it were, and for him most lamentably?

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breakfast-things were not yet cleared away. A plate freaked with fine strains of marmalade, an empty toast-rack, a broken roll—these and other things bore witness to a day inaugurated in the right spirit.

Away from them, reclining along his window-seat, was the Duke. Blue spirals rose from his cigarette, nothing in the still air to trouble them. From their railing, across the road, the Emperors gazed at him.

For a young man, sleep is a sure solvent of distress. There whirls not for him in the night any so hideous a phantasmagoria as will not become, in the clarity of next morning, a spruce procession for him to lead. Brief the vague horror of his awakening; memory sweeps back to him, and he sees nothing dreadful after all. "Why not?" is the sun's bright message to him, and "Why not indeed?" his answer. After hours of agony and doubt prolonged to cock-crow, sleep had stolen to the Duke's bed-side. He awoke late, with a heavy sense of disaster; but lo! when he remembered, everything took on a new aspect.

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 He was in love. "Why not?" He mocked himself for the morbid vigil he had spent in probing and vainly binding the wounds of his false pride. The old life was done with. He laughed as he stepped into his bath. Why should the disseizin of his soul have seemed shameful to him? He had had no soul till it passed out of his keeping. His body thrilled to the cold water, his soul as to a new sacrament. He was in love, and that was all he wished for There, on the dressing-table, lay the two studs, visible symbols of his love. Dear to him, now, the colours of them! He took them in his hand, one by one, fondling them. He wished he could wear them in the day-time; but this, of course, was impossible. His toilet finished, he dropped them into the left pocket of his waistcoat.

Therein, near to his heart, they were lying now, as he looked out at the changed world—the world that had become Zuleika. "Zuleika!" his recurrent murmur, was really an apostrophe to the whole world.

Piled against the wall were certain boxes of black japanned tin, which had just been sent to him from London. At any other time he would certainly not have left them unopened. For they contained his robes of the Garter. Thursday, the day after to-morrow, was the date fixed for the investiture of a foreign king who was now visiting England and the full chapter of Knights had

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 been commanded to Windsor for the ceremony. Yesterday the Duke had looked keenly forward to his excursion. It was only in those too rarely required robes that he had the sense of being fully dressed. But to-day not a thought had he of them.

Some clock clove with silver the stillness of the morning. Ere came the second stroke, another and nearer clock was striking. And now there were others chiming in. The air was confused with the sweet babel of its many spires, some of them booming deep, measured sequences, some tinkling impatiently and outwitting others which had begun before them. And when this anthem of jealous antiphonies and uneven rhythms had dwindled quite away and fainted in one last solitary note of silver, there started somewhere another sequence; and this, almost at its last stroke, was interrupted by yet another, which went on to tell the hour of noon in its own way, quite slowly and significantly, as though none knew it.

And now Oxford was astir with footsteps and laughter—the laughter and quick footsteps of youths released from lecture-rooms. The Duke shifted from the window. Somehow, he did not care to be observed, though it was usually at this hour that he showed himself for the setting of some new fashion in costume. Many an undergraduate, looking up, missed the picture in the window-frame.

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 The Duke paced to and fro, smiling ecstatically. He took the two studs from his pocket and gazed at them. He looked in the glass, as one seeking the sympathy of a familiar. For the first time in his life, he turned impatiently aside. It was a new kind of sympathy he needed to-day.

The front door slammed, and the staircase creaked to the ascent of two heavy boots. The Duke listened, waited irresolute. The boots passed his door, were already clumping up the next flight. "Noaks!" he cried. The boots paused, then clumped down again. The door opened and disclosed that homely figure which Zuleika had seen on her way to Judas.

Sensitive reader, start not at the apparition! Oxford is a plexus of anomalies. These two youths were (odd as it may seem to you) subject to the same Statutes, affiliated to the same College, reading for the same School; aye! and though the one had inherited half a score of noble and castellated roofs, whose mere repairs cost him annually thousands and thousands of pounds, and the other's people had but one little mean square of lead, from which the fireworks of the Crystal Palace were clearly visible every Thursday evening, in Oxford one roof sheltered both of them. Furthermore, there was even some measure of intimacy between them. It was the Duke's whim to condescend further in the direction of Noaks than in any other. He saw in Noaks his own foil

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 and antithesis, and made a point of walking up the High with him at least once in every term. Noaks, for his part, regarded the Duke with feelings mingled of idolatry and disapproval. The Duke's First in Mods oppressed him (who, by dint of dogged industry, had scraped a Second) more than all the other differences between them. But the dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end. Noaks may have regarded the Duke as a rather pathetic figure, on the whole.

"Come in, Noaks," said the Duke. "You have been to a lecture?"

"Aristotle's Politics," nodded Noaks.

"And what were they?" asked the Duke. He was eager for sympathy in his love. But so little used was he to seeking sympathy that he could not unburden himself. He temporised. Noaks muttered something about getting back to work, and fumbled with the door-handle.

"Oh, my dear fellow, don't go," said the Duke. "Sit down. Our Schools don't come on for another year. A few minutes can't make a difference in your Class. I want to—to tell you something, Noaks. Do sit down."

Noaks sat down on the edge of a chair. The Duke leaned against the mantel-piece, facing him. "I suppose, Noaks," he said, "you have never been in love."

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 "Why shouldn't I have been in love?" asked the little man, angrily.

"I can't imagine you in love," said the Duke, smiling.

"And I can't imagine you. You're too pleased with yourself," growled Noaks.

"Spur your imagination, Noaks," said his friend. "I am in love."

"So am I," was an unexpected answer, and the Duke (whose need of sympathy was too new to have taught him sympathy with others) laughed aloud. "Whom do you love?" he asked, throwing himself into an arm-chair.

"I don't know who she is," was another unexpected answer.

"When did you meet her?" asked the Duke. "Where? What did you say to her?"

"Yesterday. In the Corn. I didn't say anything to her."

"Is she beautiful?"

"Yes. What's that to you?"

"Dark or fair?"

"She's dark. She looks like a foreigner. She looks like—like one of those photographs in the shop-windows."

"A rhapsody, Noaks! What became of her? Was she alone?"

"She was with the old Warden, in his carriage."

Zuleika—Noaks! The Duke started, as at an affront, and glared. Next moment, he saw the

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