pageant of her past. She was a young person whose reveries
never were in retrospect. For her the past was no treasury of distinct
memories, all hoarded and classified, some brighter than others and more
highly valued. All memories were for her but as the motes in one fused
radiance that followed her and made more luminous the pathway of
her future. She was always looking forward. She was looking forward
now--that shade of ennui had passed from her face--to the week she was
to spend in Oxford. A new city was a new toy to her, and--for it was
youth's homage that she loved best--this city of youths was a toy after
her own heart.

Aye, and it was youths who gave homage to her most freely. She was
of that high-stepping and flamboyant type that captivates youth most
surely. Old men and men of middle age admired her, but she had not that
flower-like quality of shyness and helplessness, that look of innocence,
so dear to men who carry life's secrets in their heads. Yet Zuleika
WAS very innocent, really. She was as pure as that young shepherdess
Marcella, who, all unguarded, roved the mountains and was by all the
shepherds adored. Like Marcella, she had given her heart to no man, had
preferred none. Youths were reputed to have died for love of her,
as Chrysostom died for love of the shepherdess; and she, like the
shepherdess, had shed no tear. When Chrysostom was lying on his bier in
the valley, and Marcella looked down from the high rock, Ambrosio,
the dead man's comrade, cried out on her, upbraiding her with bitter
words--"Oh basilisk of our mountains!" Nor do I think Ambrosio spoke too
strongly. Marcella cared nothing for men's admiration, and yet, instead
of retiring to one of those nunneries which are founded for her kind,
she chose to rove the mountains, causing despair to all the shepherds.
Zuleika, with her peculiar temperament, would have gone mad in a
nunnery. "But," you may argue, "ought not she to have taken the veil,
even at the cost of her reason, rather than cause so much despair in the
world? If Marcella was a basilisk, as you seem to think, how about Miss
Dobson?" Ah, but Marcella knew quite well, boasted even, that she never
would or could love any man. Zuleika, on the other hand, was a woman of
really passionate fibre. She may not have had that conscious, separate,
and quite explicit desire to be a mother with which modern playwrights
credit every unmated member of her sex. But she did know that she could
love