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Zuleika Dobson, or, an Oxford love story by Sir Max Beerbohm
page 8 of 293 (02%)
Zuleika wandered to her mirror. "Undress me, Melisande," she said.
Like all who are wont to appear by night before the public, she had
the habit of resting towards sunset.

Presently Melisande withdrew. Her mistress, in a white peignoir tied
with a blue sash, lay in a great chintz chair, gazing out of the
bay-window. The quadrangle below was very beautiful, with its walls of
rugged grey, its cloisters, its grass carpet. But to her it was of no
more interest than if it had been the rattling court-yard to one of
those hotels in which she spent her life. She saw it, but heeded it
not. She seemed to be thinking of herself, or of something she
desired, or of some one she had never met. There was ennui, and there
was wistfulness, in her gaze. Yet one would have guessed these things
to be transient--to be no more than the little shadows that sometimes
pass between a bright mirror and the brightness it reflects.

Zuleika was not strictly beautiful. Her eyes were a trifle large, and
their lashes longer than they need have been. An anarchy of small
curls was her chevelure, a dark upland of misrule, every hair
asserting its rights over a not discreditable brow. For the rest, her
features were not at all original. They seemed to have been derived
rather from a gallimaufry of familiar models. From Madame la Marquise
de Saint-Ouen came the shapely tilt of the nose. The mouth was a mere
replica of Cupid's bow, lacquered scarlet and strung with the littlest
pearls. No apple-tree, no wall of peaches, had not been robbed, nor
any Tyrian rose-garden, for the glory of Miss Dobson's cheeks. Her
neck was imitation-marble. Her hands and feet were of very mean
proportions. She had no waist to speak of.

Yet, though a Greek would have railed at her asymmetry, and an
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