This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
94
ZULEIKA DOBSON

remembered vision. And the rest hardly recognised her from the descriptions, so incomparably fairer was the reality than the hope.

She passed among them. None questioned the worthiness of her escort. Could I give you better proof of the awe in which our Duke was held? Any man is glad to be seen escorting a very pretty woman. He thinks it adds to his prestige. Whereas, in point of fact, his fellow-men are saying merely "Who's that appalling fellow with her?" or Why does she go about with that ass So-and-So?" Such cavil may in part be envy. But it is a fact that no man, howsoever graced, can shine in juxtaposition to a very pretty woman. The Duke himself cut a poor figure beside Zuleika. Yet not one of all the undergraduates felt she could have made a wiser choice.

She swept among them. Her own intrinsic radiance was not all that flashed from her. She was a moving reflector and refractor of all the rays of all the eyes that mankind had turned on her. Her mien told the story of her days. Bright eyes, light feet—she trod erect from a vista whose glare was dazzling to all beholders. She swept among them, a miracle, overwhelming, breath-bereaving. Nothing at all like her had ever been seen in Oxford.

Mainly architectural, the beauties of Oxford. True, the place is no longer one-sexed. There are the virguncules of Somerville and Lady Margaret's