ned by rowing, had been transfixed this afternoon
by Eros' darts. All of them had seen Zuleika as she came down to the
river; and now they sat gaping up at her, fumbling with their oars. The
tiny cox gaped too; but he it was who first recalled duty. With piping
adjurations he brought the giants back to their senses. The boat moved
away down stream, with a fairly steady stroke.

Not in a day can the traditions of Oxford be sent spinning. From all the
barges the usual punt-loads of young men were being ferried across
to the towing-path--young men naked of knee, armed with rattles,
post-horns, motor-hooters, gongs, and other instruments of clangour.
Though Zuleika filled their thoughts, they hurried along the
towing-path, as by custom, to the starting-point.

She, meanwhile, had not taken her eyes off the Duke's profile. Nor
had she dared, for fear of disappointment, to ask him just what he had
meant.

"All these men," he repeated dreamily, "will be coy of your advances."
It seemed to him a good thing that his death, his awful example, would
disinfatuate his fellow alumni. He had never been conscious of
public spirit. He had lived for himself alone. Love had come to him
yesternight, and to-day had waked in him a sympathy with mankind. It
was a fine thing to be a saviour. It was splendid to be human. He looked
quickly round to her who had wrought this change in him.

But the loveliest face in all the world will not please you if you see
it suddenly, eye to eye, at a distance of half an inch from your own.
It was thus that the Duke saw Zuleika's: a monstrous deliquium a-glare.
Only for the fraction of an instant, though. Recoiling, he beheld the
loveliness that he knew--more adorably vivid now in its look of eager
questioning. And in his every fibre he thrilled to her. Even so had she
gazed at him last night, this morning. Aye, now as then, her soul was
full of him. He had recaptured, not her love, but his power to please
her. It was enough. He bowed his head; and "Moriturus te saluto" were
the words formed silently by his lips. He was glad that his death would
be a public service to the University. But the salutary lesson of
what the newspapers would call his "rash act" was, after all, only a
side-issue. The great thing, the prospect that flushed his cheek, was
the consummation of his own love, for its own sake, by his own death.
And, as he met her gaze, the question that had already flitted through
his brain found a fa