Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story

“Shame!” screamed Clarence, who had darted out into the fray. “I found him hiding behind the curtain,” chimed in Katie. “And I a mother to him!” said Mrs. Batch, shaking her fist. “‘What is life without love?’ indeed! Oh, the cowardly, underhand--” “Wretch,” prompted her cronies. “Let’s kick him out of the house!” suggested Clarence, dancing for joy. Zuleika, smiling brilliantly down at the boy, said “Just you run up and fight him!” “Right you are,” he answered, with a look of knightly devotion, and darted back into the house. “No escape!” she cried up to Noaks. “You’ve got to fight him now. He and you are just about evenly matched, I fancy.” But, grimly enough, Zuleika’s estimate was never put to the test. Is it harder for a coward to fight with his fists than to kill himself? Or again, is it easier for him to die than to endure a prolonged cross-fire of women’s wrath and scorn? This I know: that in the life of even the least and meanest of us there is somewhere one fine moment--one high chance not missed. I like to think it was by operation of this law that Noaks had now clambered out upon the window-sill, silencing, sickening, scattering like chaff the women beneath him. He was already not there when Clarence bounded into the room. “Come on!” yelled the boy, first thrusting his head behind the door, then diving beneath the table, then plucking aside either window-curtain, vowing vengeance. Vengeance was not his. Down on the road without, not yet looked at but by the steadfast eyes of the Emperors, the last of the undergraduates lay dead; and fleet-footed Zuleika, with her fingers still pressed to her ears, had taken full toll now.