was impossible for her to give her entertainment in full. Some of her
tricks (notably the Secret Aquarium, and the Blazing Ball of Worsted)
needed special preparation, and a table fitted with a "servante" or
secret tray. The table for to-night's performance was an ordinary one,
brought out from the porter's lodge. The MacQuern deposited on it the
great casket. Zuleika, retaining him as her assistant, picked nimbly
out from their places and put in array the curious appurtenances of her
art--the Magic Canister, the Demon Egg-Cup, and the sundry other vessels
which, lost property of young Edward Gibbs, had been by a Romanoff
transmuted from wood to gold, and were now by the moon reduced
temporarily to silver.

In a great dense semicircle the young men disposed themselves around
her. Those who were in front squatted down on the gravel; those who were
behind knelt; the rest stood. Young Oxford! Here, in this mass of boyish
faces, all fused and obliterated, was the realisation of that phrase.
Two or three thousands of human bodies, human souls? Yet the effect of
them in the moonlight was as of one great passive monster.

So was it seen by the Duke, as he stood leaning against the wall,
behind Zuleika's table. He saw it as a monster couchant and enchanted,
a monster that was to die; and its death was in part his own doing.
But remorse in him gave place to hostility. Zuleika had begun her
performance. She was producing the Barber's Pole from her mouth. And
it was to her that the Duke's heart went suddenly out in tenderness
and pity. He forgot her levity and vanity--her wickedness, as he had
inwardly called it. He thrilled with that intense anxiety which comes to
a man when he sees his beloved offering to the public an exhibition of
her skill, be it in singing, acting, dancing, or any other art. Would
she acquit herself well? The lover's trepidation is painful enough when
the beloved has genius--how should these clods appreciate her? and who
set them in judgment over her? It must be worse when the beloved has
mediocrity. And Zuleika, in conjuring, had rather less than that. Though
indeed she took herself quite seriously as a conjurer, she brought to
her art neither conscience nor ambition, in any true sense of those
words. Since her debut, she had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
The stale and narrow repertory which she had acquired from Edward Gibbs
was all she had to offer; and this, and her marked lack of skill, she
ek