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Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story
·
Sir Max Beerbohm
41
He
steeled
himself.
“Miss
Dobson,”
he
said,
“I
wish
to
apologise
to
you.”
Zuleika
looked
at
him
eagerly.
“You
can’t
give
me
luncheon?
You’ve
got
something
better
to
do?”
“No.
I
wish
to
ask
you
to
forgive
me
for
my
behaviour
last
night.”
“There
is
nothing
to
forgive.”
“There
is.
My
manners
were
vile.
I
know
well
what
happened.
Though
you,
too,
cannot
have
forgotten,
I
won’t
spare
myself
the
recital.
You
were
my
hostess,
and
I
ignored
you.
Magnanimous,
you
paid
me
the
prettiest
compliment
woman
ever
paid
to
man,
and
I
insulted
you.
I
left
the
house
in
order
that
I
might
not
see
you
again.
To
the
doorsteps
down
which
he
should
have
kicked
me,
your
grandfather
followed
me
with
words
of
kindliest
courtesy.
If
he
had
sped
me
with
a
kick
so
skilful
that
my
skull
had
been
shattered
on
the
kerb,
neither
would
he
have
outstepped
those
bounds
set
to
the
conduct
of
English
gentlemen,
nor
would
you
have
garnered
more
than
a
trifle
on
account
of
your
proper
reckoning.
I
do
not
say
that
you
are
the
first
person
whom
I
have
wantonly
injured.
But
it
is
a
fact
that
I,
in
whom
pride
has
ever
been
the
topmost
quality,
have
never
expressed
sorrow
to
any
one
for
anything.
Thus,
I
might
urge
that
my
present
abjectness
must
be
intolerably
painful
to
me,
and
should
incline
you
to
forgive.
But
such
an
argument
were
specious
merely.
I
will
be
quite
frank
with
you.
I
will
confess
to
you
that,
in
this
humbling
of
myself
before
you,
I
take
a
pleasure
as
passionate
as
it
is
strange.
A
confusion
of
feelings?
Yet
you,
with
a
woman’s
instinct,
will
have
already
caught
the
clue
to
it.
It
needs
no
mirror
to
assure
me
that
the
clue
is
here
for
you,
in
my
eyes.
It
needs
no
dictionary
of
quotations
to
remind
me
that
the
eyes
are
the
windows
of
the
soul.
And
I
know
that
from
two
open
windows
my
soul
has
been
leaning
and
signalling
to
you,
in
a
code
far
more
definitive
and
swifter
than
words
of
mine,
that
I
love
you.”
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