ABSTRACT
Between drifts of yellowing leaves, Parks Road lay white with a clarity peculiar to October afternoons in Oxford, when Wilhelmina Delacroix Cook rounded the corner of the park and turned down in the direction of Holywell Street and the Broad. 3 She walked with a swinging movement of the hips, at an uncomfortable pace considering the height of her heels: for this was her first term, and in Oxford one walked briskly, rhythmically at ease, careless of appearances. She panted a little, and her bust, tightly confined in a plum-coloured leather jerkin, swayed very gently from side to side. Under her left arm she clutched a stout, leather portfolio and bent above it so that a mop of flaxen hair – for she wore no hat – was jolted forwards over one eye. She halted now, glanced up at the windows of Keble, shook back the hair and came on, slightly dragging the right foot. 4
