I was in Italy when this book was first published. A year later (1912) I visited London, and I found that most of my friends and acquaintances spoke to me of Zu-like-a⁠—a name which I hardly recognise...

Illi Almae Matri...

That old bell, presage of a train, had just sounded through Oxford station; and the undergraduates who were waiting there, gay figures in tweed or flannel, moved to the margin of the platform and gaze...

The sun streamed through the bay-window of a “best” bedroom in the Warden’s house, and glorified the pale crayon-portraits on the wall, the dimity curtains, the old fresh chintz. He invaded the many t...

The clock in the Warden’s drawing-room had just struck eight, and already the ducal feet were beautiful on the white bearskin hearthrug. So slim and long were they, of instep so nobly arched, that onl...

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

Luncheon passed in almost unbroken silence. Both Zuleika and the Duke were ravenously hungry, as people always are after the stress of any great emotional crisis. Between them, they made very short wo...

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” At any rate, the sinner has a better chance than the saint of being hereafter remembered. We, in whom original sin p...

The Duke did not try to break the stony silence in which Zuleika walked. Her displeasure was a luxury to him, for it was so soon to be dispelled. A little while, and she would be hating herself for he...

A few minutes before half-past seven, the Duke, arrayed for dinner, passed leisurely up the High. The arresting feature of his costume was a mulberry-coloured coat, with brass buttons. This, to anyone...

Across the Front Quadrangle, heedless of the great crowd to right and left, Dorset rushed. Up the stone steps to the Hall he bounded, and only on the Hall’s threshold was he brought to a pause. The do...

Sounds of a violin, drifting out through the open windows of the Hall, suggested that the second part of the concert had begun. All the undergraduates, however, except the few who figured in the progr...

I said that I was Clio’s servant. And I felt, when I said it, that you looked at me dubiously, and murmured among yourselves. Not that you doubted I was somewhat connected with Clio’s household. The l...

Not less averse than from dogging the Duke was I from remaining another instant in the presence of Miss Dobson. There seemed to be no possible excuse for her. This time she had gone too far. She was o...

I had on the way a horrible apprehension. What if the Duke, in his agony, had taken the one means to forgetfulness? His room, I could see, was lit up; but a man does not necessarily choose to die in t...

They had awaited thousands and innumerable thousands of daybreaks in the Broad, these Emperors, counting the long slow hours till the night were over. It is in the night especially that their fallen g...

Humphrey Greddon, in the Duke’s place, would have taken a pinch of snuff. But he could not have made that gesture with a finer air than the Duke gave to its modern equivalent. In the art of taking and...

For what happened a few moments later you must not blame him. Some measure of force was the only way out of an impossible situation. It was in vain that he commanded the young lady to let go: she did ...

He might not have grudged her the last word, had she properly needed it. Its utter superfluity⁠—the perfection of her victory without it⁠—was what galled him. Yes, she had outflanked him, taken him un...

Her actual offspring does not suffice a very motherly woman. Such a woman was Mrs. Batch. Had she been blest with a dozen children, she must yet have regarded herself as also a mother to whatever two ...

And now he had passed under the little arch between the eighth and the ninth Emperor, rounded the Sheldonian, and been lost to sight of Katie, whom, as he was equally glad and sorry he had kissed her,...

Artistically, there is a good deal to be said for that old Greek friend of ours, the Messenger; and I dare say you blame me for having, as it were, made you an eyewitness of the death of the undergrad...

And Zuleika? She had done a wise thing, and was where it was best that she should be. Her face lay upturned on the water’s surface, and round it were the masses of her dark hair, half floating, half s...

Stroke by stroke, the great familiar monody of that incomparable curfew rose and fell in the stillness. Nothing of Oxford lingers more surely than it in the memory of Oxford men; and to one revisiting...

Twisting and turning in her flight, with wild eyes that fearfully retained the image of that small man gathering himself to spring, Zuleika found herself suddenly where she could no further go. She wa...

From the shifting gloom of the staircase to the soft radiance cast through the open door of her bedroom was for poor Zuleika an almost heartening transition. She stood awhile on the threshold, watchin...

Pronounced as Tacton. ↩ Pronounced as Tavvle-Tacton. ↩ The Junta has been reconstituted. But the apostolic line was broken, the thread was snapped; the old magic is fled. ↩ As Edward VII was at this t...