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Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story
·
Sir Max Beerbohm
20
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.
And,
surely,
no
woman
who
knows
that
of
herself
can
be
rightly
censured
for
not
recluding
herself
from
the
world:
it
is
only
women
without
the
power
to
love
who
have
no
right
to
provoke
men’s
love.
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