Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story

“You are great, sir, you are wonderful,” she said, gazing up to him, rapt. It was the first time she had ever called him “sir.” It is easier, as Michelet suggested, for a woman to change her opinion of a man than for him to change his opinion of himself. Noaks, despite the presence of mind he had shown a few moments ago, still saw himself as he had seen himself during the past hours: that is, as an arrant little coward--one who by his fear to die had put himself outside the pale of decent manhood. He had meant to escape from the house at dead of night and, under an assumed name, work his passage out to Australia--a land which had always made strong appeal to his imagination. No one, he had reflected, would suppose because his body was not retrieved from the water that he had not perished with the rest. And he had looked to Australia to make a man of him yet: in Encounter Bay, perhaps, or in the Gulf of Carpentaria, he might yet end nobly. Thus Katie’s behaviour was as much an embarrassment as a relief; and he asked her in what way he was great and wonderful. “Modest, like all heroes!” she cried, and, still kneeling, proceeded to sing his praises with a so infectious fervour that Noaks did begin to feel he had done a fine thing in not dying. After all, was it not moral cowardice as much as love that had tempted him to die? He had wrestled with it, thrown it. “Yes,” said he, when her rhapsody was over, “perhaps I am modest.”