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Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story
·
Sir Max Beerbohm
86
“Yet
often
you
talk
as
though
you
had
read
rather
much.
Your
way
of
speech
has
what
is
called
‘the
literary
flavour’.”
“Ah,
that
is
an
unfortunate
trick
which
I
caught
from
a
writer,
a
Mr.
Beerbohm,
who
once
sat
next
to
me
at
dinner
somewhere.
I
can’t
break
myself
of
it.
I
assure
you
I
hardly
ever
open
a
book.
Of
life,
though,
my
experience
has
been
very
wide.
Brief?
But
I
suppose
the
soul
of
man
during
the
past
two
or
three
years
has
been
much
as
it
was
in
the
reign
of
Queen
Elizabeth
and
of--whoever
it
was
that
reigned
over
the
Greek
pastures.
And
I
daresay
the
modern
poets
are
making
the
same
old
silly
distortions.
But
forgive
me,”
she
added
gently,
“perhaps
you
yourself
are
a
poet?”
“Only
since
yesterday,”
answered
the
Duke
(not
less
unfairly
to
himself
than
to
Roger
Newdigate
and
Thomas
Gaisford).
And
he
felt
he
was
especially
a
dramatic
poet.
All
the
while
that
she
had
been
sitting
by
him
here,
talking
so
glibly,
looking
so
straight
into
his
eyes,
flashing
at
him
so
many
pretty
gestures,
it
was
the
sense
of
tragic
irony
that
prevailed
in
him--that
sense
which
had
stirred
in
him,
and
been
repressed,
on
the
way
from
Judas.
He
knew
that
she
was
making
her
effect
consciously
for
the
other
young
men
by
whom
the
roof
of
the
barge
was
now
thronged.
Him
alone
she
seemed
to
observe.
By
her
manner,
she
might
have
seemed
to
be
making
love
to
him.
He
envied
the
men
she
was
so
deliberately
making
envious--the
men
whom,
in
her
undertone
to
him,
she
was
really
addressing.
But
he
did
take
comfort
in
the
irony.
Though
she
used
him
as
a
stalking-horse,
he,
after
all,
was
playing
with
her
as
a
cat
plays
with
a
mouse.
While
she
chattered
on,
without
an
inkling
that
he
was
no
ordinary
lover,
and
coaxing
him
to
present
two
quite
ordinary
young
men
to
her,
he
held
over
her
the
revelation
that
he
for
love
of
her
was
about
to
die.
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