his lodgings?
"But I," she said, "wanted only to serve you in meekness. The idea of
ever being pert to you didn't enter into my head. You show a side of
your character as unpleasing as it was unforeseen."

"Perhaps then," said the Duke, "it is as well that I am going to die."
She acknowledged his rebuke with a pretty gesture of penitence. "You
may have been faultless in love," he added; "but you would not have laid
down your life for me."

"Oh," she answered, "wouldn't I though? You don't know me. That is just
the sort of thing I should have loved to do. I am much more romantic
than you are, really. I wonder," she said, glancing at his breast, "if
YOUR pink pearl would have turned black? And I wonder if YOU would have
taken the trouble to change that extraordinary coat you are wearing?"

In sooth, no costume could have been more beautifully Cimmerian than
Zuleika's. And yet, thought the Duke, watching her as the concert
proceeded, the effect of her was not lugubrious. Her darkness shone.
The black satin gown she wore was a stream of shifting high-lights.
Big black diamonds were around her throat and wrists, and tiny black
diamonds starred the fan she wielded. In her hair gleamed a great
raven's wing. And brighter, brighter than all these were her eyes.
Assuredly no, there was nothing morbid about her. Would one even
(wondered the Duke, for a disloyal instant) go so far as to say she was
heartless? Ah no, she was merely strong. She was one who could tread the
tragic plane without stumbling, and be resilient in the valley of the
shadow. What she had just said was no more than the truth: she would
have loved to die for him, had he not forfeited her heart. She would
have asked no tears. That she had none to shed for him now, that she did
but share his exhilaration, was the measure of her worthiness to have
the homage of his self-slaughter.

"By the way," she whispered, "I want to ask one little favour of you.
Will you, please, at the last moment to-morrow, call out my name in a
loud voice, so that every one around can hear?"

"Of course I will."

"So that no one shall ever be able to say it wasn't for me that you
died, you know."

"May I use simply your Christian name?"

"Yes, I really don't see why you shouldn't--at such a moment."

"Thank you." His face glowed.

Thus did they commune, these two, radiant without and within. And behind
them, throughout the Hall, the undergraduates craned their necks for
a glimp