“These are the one thing I could not part with—even to you, for whose sake they are hallowed.”
Zuleika pouted. On the verge of persisting, she changed her mind, and was silent.
“Well!” she said abruptly, “how about these races? Are you going to take me to see them?”
“Races? What races?” murmured the Duke. “Oh yes. I had forgotten. Do you really mean that you want to see them?”
“Why, of course! They are great fun, aren’t they?”
“And you are in a mood for great fun? Well, there is plenty of time. The Second Division is not rowed till half-past four.”
“The Second Division? Why not take me to the First?”
“That is not rowed till six.”
“Isn’t this rather an odd arrangement?”
“No doubt. But Oxford never pretended to be strong in mathematics.”
“Why, it’s not yet three!” cried Zuleika, with a woebegone stare at the clock. “What is to be done in the meantime?”
“Am not I sufficiently diverting?” asked the Duke bitterly.
“Quite candidly, no. Have you any friend lodging with you here?”
“One, overhead. A man named Noaks.”
“A small man, with spectacles?”
“Very small, with very large spectacles.”
“He was pointed out to me yesterday, as I was driving from the Station ... No, I don’t think I want to meet him. What can you have in common with him?”
“One frailty, at least: he, too, Miss Dobson, loves you.”
“But of course he does. He saw me drive past. Very few of the others,” she said, rising and shaking herself, “have set eyes on me. Do let us go out and look at the Colleges. I do need change of scene. If you were a doctor, you would have prescribed that long ago. It is very bad for me to be here, a kind of Cinderella, moping over the ashes of my love for you. Where is your hat?”
Looking round, she caught sight of herself in the glass. “Oh,” she cried, “what a fright I do look! I must never be seen like this!”
“You look very beautiful.”
“I don’t. That is a lover’s illusion. You yourself told me that this tartan was perfectly hideous. There was no need to tell me that. I came thus because I was coming to see you. I chose this frock in the deliberate fear that you, if I made myself presentable, might succumb at second sight of me. I would have sent out for a sack and dressed myself in that, I would have blacked my face all over with burnt cork, only I was afraid of being mobbed on the way to you.”
“Even so, you would but have been mobbed for your incorrigible beauty.”
“My beauty! How I hate it!” sighed Zuleika. “Still, here it is, and I must needs make the best of it. Come! Take me to Judas. I will change my things. Then I shall be fit for the races.”
As these two emerged, side by side, into the street, the Emperors exchanged stony sidelong glances. For they saw the more than normal pallor of the Duke’s face, and something very like desperation in his eyes. They saw the tragedy progressing to its foreseen close. Unable to stay its course, they were grimly fascinated now.
1. Pronounced as Tacton.
2. Pronounced as Tavvle-Tacton.
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