"What--what! Do I not fit the wizened stamp of Macbeth's sisters three?"
Shakespeare flung out his arms with a gesture of despair.
"Yet more and deeper mystery!" he cried. "My half-formed plots--half-finished scraps--the clear analysis of souls whose only life is here!" he tapped his forehead. "Say, good lady, has Will Shakespeare spoken, perchance, in sleep--yet e'en so, how could----"
He broke off and coming to her side, spoke earnestly in lowered tones.
"Tell me. Have you the fabled power to read the soul? Naught else explains your speech."
"Tell me, sir, first the truth," said Phoebe. "In all sadness, Master Shakespeare, have you had aught from Francis Bacon? I mean by way of aid in writing--or e'en of mere suggestion?"
"Bacon--Francis Bacon," said he, evidently at a loss. "There was one Nicholas Bacon----"
"Then, in good sooth, I can but answer 'No,' mistress; since that I knew not even that this Nicholas had a son."
Phoebe heaved a sigh of relief and then went on with a partial return of her former spirit.
"Then all's well!" she exclaimed. "I am a muse well pleased; and now, an you will, I'll teach you straight more verses for your play."
"As you like it," said Shakespeare, bowing, half-amused and wholly mystified.
"Good!" she retorted, brightly. "'As You Like It' shall you name the piece, that henceforth this our conversation you may bear in mind."
Smiling, he took up his papers and wrote across the top of one of them "As You Like It" in large characters.
"Now write as I shall bid you," Phoebe said. "Pray be seated, good my pupil, come."
Then, seated there by Phoebe's side, the poet committed to paper the whole of Jacques's speech on "The Seven Ages," just as Phoebe spoke it from her memory of the Shakespeare club at home.
When he ceased scribbling, he leaned forward with elbows on his knees and ran his eyes slowly and wonderingly over each line in turn, whispering the words destined to become so famous. Phoebe leaned a little away from her companion, resting one hand on the bench, while she watched his face with a smile that slowly melted to the mood of dreamy meditation. They sat thus alone in silence for some time, so still that a wren, alighting on the path, hopped pecking among the stones at their very feet.