pers of their leaves were lost in the murmur of
the crowd returning from the race. Here, at length, came the torrent
of which the Duke had spoken; and Zuleika's heart rose at it. Here was
Oxford! From side to side the avenue was filled with a dense procession
of youths--youths interspersed with maidens whose parasols were as
flotsam and jetsam on a seething current of straw hats. Zuleika neither
quickened nor slackened her advance. But brightlier and brightlier shone
her eyes.

The vanguard of the procession was pausing now, swaying, breaking at
sight of her. She passed, imperial, through the way cloven for her. All
a-down the avenue, the throng parted as though some great invisible
comb were being drawn through it. The few youths who had already
seen Zuleika, and by whom her beauty had been bruited throughout the
University, were lost in a new wonder, so incomparably fairer was she
than the remembered vision. And the rest hardly recognised her from the
descriptions, so incomparably fairer was the reality than the hope.

She passed among them. None questioned the worthiness of her escort.
Could I give you better proof the awe in which our Duke was held? Any
man is glad to be seen escorting a very pretty woman. He thinks it adds
to his prestige. Whereas, in point of fact, his fellow-men are saying
merely "Who's that appalling fellow with her?" or "Why does she go about
with that ass So-and-So?" Such cavil may in part be envy. But it is a
fact that no man, howsoever graced, can shine in juxtaposition to a very
pretty woman. The Duke himself cut a poor figure beside Zuleika. Yet not
one of all the undergraduates felt she could have made a wiser choice.

She swept among them. Her own intrinsic radiance was not all that
flashed from her. She was a moving reflector and refractor of all the
rays of all the eyes that mankind had turned on her. Her mien told the
story of her days. Bright eyes, light feet--she trod erect from a vista
whose glare was dazzling to all beholders. She swept among them, a
miracle, overwhelming, breath-bereaving. Nothing at all like her had
ever been seen in Oxford.

Mainly architectural, the beauties of Oxford. True, the place is no
longer one-sexed. There are the virguncules of Somerville and Lady
Margaret's Hall; but beauty and the lust for learning have yet to be
allied. There are the innumerable wives and daughters around the Parks,
running in and out of their little red-brick villas; but the in