The front door slammed, and the staircase creaked to the ascent of two
heavy boots. The Duke listened, waited irresolute. The boots passed
his door, were already clumping up the next flight. "Noaks!" he cried.
The boots paused, then clumped down again. The door opened and
disclosed that homely figure which Zuleika had seen on her way to
Judas.

Sensitive reader, start not at the apparition! Oxford is a plexus of
anomalies. These two youths were (odd as it may seem to you) subject
to the same Statutes, affiliated to the same College, reading for the
same School; aye! and though the one had inherited half a score of
noble and castellated roofs, whose mere repairs cost him annually
thousands and thousands of pounds, and the other's people had but one
little mean square of lead, from which the fireworks of the Crystal
Palace were clearly visible every Thursday evening, in Oxford one roof
sheltered both of them. Furthermore, there was even some measure of
intimacy between them. It was the Duke's whim to condescend further in
the direction of Noaks than in any other. He saw in Noaks his own foil
and antithesis, and made a point of walking up the High with him at
least once in every term. Noaks, for his part, regarded the Duke with
feelings mingled of idolatry and disapproval. The Duke's First in Mods
oppressed him (who, by dint of dogged industry, had scraped a Second)
more than all the other differences between them. But the dullard's
envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they
will come to a bad end. Noaks may have regarded the Duke as a rather
pathetic figure, on the whole.

"Come in, Noaks," said the Duke. "You have been to a lecture?"

"Aristotle's Politics," nodded Noaks.