ed out with the self-same "patter" that had sufficed that impossible
young man. It was especially her jokes that now sent shudders up the
spine of her lover, and brought tears to his eyes, and kept him in
a state of terror as to what she would say next. "You see," she had
exclaimed lightly after the production of the Barber's Pole, "how easy
it is to set up business as a hairdresser." Over the Demon Egg-Cup she
said that the egg was "as good as fresh." And her constantly reiterated
catch-phrase--"Well, this is rather queer!"--was the most distressing
thing of all.

The Duke blushed to think what these men thought of her. Would love
were blind! These her lovers were doubtless judging her. They forgave
her--confound their impudence!--because of her beauty. The banality of
her performance was an added grace. It made her piteous. Damn them, they
were sorry for her. Little Noaks was squatting in the front row, peering
up at her through his spectacles. Noaks was as sorry for her as the rest
of them. Why didn't the earth yawn and swallow them all up?

Our hero's unreasoning rage was fed by a not unreasonable jealousy. It
was clear to him that Zuleika had forgotten his existence. To-day, as
soon as he had killed her love, she had shown him how much less to her
was his love than the crowd's. And now again it was only the crowd she
cared for. He followed with his eyes her long slender figure as she
threaded her way in and out of the crowd, sinuously, confidingly,
producing a penny from one lad's elbow, a threepenny-bit from between
another's neck and collar, half a crown from another's hair, and always
repeating in that flute-like voice of hers "Well, this is rather queer!"
Hither and thither she fared, her neck and arms gleaming white from the
luminous blackness of her dress, in the luminous blueness of the night.
At a distance, she might have been a wraith; or a breeze made visible; a
vagrom breeze, warm and delicate, and in league with death.

Yes, that is how she might have seemed to a casual observer. But to the
Duke there was nothing weird about her: she was radiantly a woman; a
goddess; and his first and last love. Bitter his heart was, but only
against the mob she wooed, not against her for wooing it. She was cruel?
All goddesses are that. She was demeaning herself? His soul welled up
anew in pity, in passion.

Yonder, in the Hall, the concert ran its course, making a feeble
incidental music to the dark emotions of the