for
you the missing lines completing young Hamlet's soliloquy?"

Shakespeare looked into her face for a few moments in silence.

"Why, truly," he said at last, "I have here present business with my
fellow-player Burbidge." He paused, and then, yielding to the pleading
in her eyes: "Yet call it a bargain, mistress," he said. "Speak me the
lines I lack and straightway will I take your word to Sir Guy."

"Now blessings on thee!" cried Phoebe. "Give me straight the line you
last have written."

At once the poet began:

"When he himself might his quietus make----"

"With a bare bodkin"--broke in the excited girl. "Who would fardels
bear, to grunt and sweat beneath a weary life, but that the thought of
something after death--the undiscovered country from whose bourne no
traveller returns--puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear the ills
we have than fly to others that we know not of. Thus conscience does
make cowards of us all, and so the native hue of resolution is sicklied
o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and
moment by this regard their currents turn awry and lose the name of
action."

"No more--no more!" cried Shakespeare, in an ecstasy. "More than
completely hast thou made thy bargain good, damsel unmatchable! What!
Can it be! Why here have we the very impress of young Hamlet's soul--'To
grunt and sweat beneath a weary life'--feel you not there compunction
and disgust, seeing in life no cleanly burden, but a 'fardel' truly,
borne on the greasy shoulders of filthy slaves!"

He turned and paced back and forth upon the gravel, repeating without
mistake and with gestures and accents inimitable the lines which
Phoebe had dictated. She watched him, listening attentively, conscious
that what she saw and heard, though given in a moment, were to be
carried with her forever; convinced as well that she was for something
in this, and thankful while half afraid.

Reaching the end of the soliloquy, Shakespeare turned to the maiden, who
was still standing, backed by the warm color of a group of peonies.

"Nay, but tell me, damsel," he cried, appealingly. "Explain this power!
Art thou, indeed, no other than Mary Burton?"

How refuse this request? And yet--what explanation would be believed?
Perhaps, if she had time, she thought, some intelligible account of the
truth would occur to her.

"And have you forgot your bargain so soon?" she said, reproachfully
shaking her head. "Away, friend,