his eyes. Foredone by the agitation of the
past hour, he did not at once realise what it was that he saw. His
impression was of something in bad taste, some discord in his costume
... a black pearl and a pink pearl in his shirt-front!

Just for a moment, absurdly over-estimating poor Zuleika's skill, he
supposed himself a victim of legerdemain. Another moment, and the import
of the studs revealed itself. He staggered up from his chair, covering
his breast with one arm, and murmured that he was faint. As he hurried
from the room, the Oriel don was pouring out a tumbler of water and
suggesting burnt feathers. The Warden, solicitous, followed him into
the hall. He snatched up his hat, gasping that he had spent a delightful
evening--was very sorry--was subject to these attacks. Once outside, he
took frankly to his heels.

At the corner of the Broad, he looked back over his shoulder. He had
half expected a scarlet figure skimming in pursuit. There was nothing.
He halted. Before him, the Broad lay empty beneath the moon. He went
slowly, mechanically, to his rooms.

The high grim busts of the Emperors stared down at him, their faces more
than ever tragically cavernous and distorted. They saw and read in
that moonlight the symbols on his breast. As he stood on his doorstep,
waiting for the door to be opened, he must have seemed to them a thing
for infinite compassion. For were they not privy to the doom that the
morrow, or the morrow's morrow, held for him--held not indeed for him
alone, yet for him especially, as it were, and for him most lamentably?

IV

The breakfast-things were not yet cleared away. A plate freaked with
fine strains of marmalade, an empty toast-rack, a broken roll--these and
other things bore witness to a day inaugurated in the right spirit.

Away from them, reclining along his window-seat, was the Duke. Blue
spirals rose from his cigarette, nothing in the still air to trouble
them. From their railing, across the road, the Emperors gazed at him.

For a young man, sleep is a sure solvent of distress. There whirls not
for him in the night any so hideous a phantasmagoria as will not become,
in the clarity of next morning, a spruce procession for him to lead.
Brief the vague horror of his awakening; memory sweeps back to him,
and he sees nothing dreadful after all. "Why not?" is the sun's bright
message to him, and "Why not indeed?" his answer. After hours of
agony and doubt prolonged to cock-crow,