g hostess
confirmed him in his delusion that he had found a friend capable of
understanding him. That she did not as yet wholly do so was the fault of
his cursed disguise, which confused her perceptions of his real
character with preconceived ideas of Essex. He longed to reveal himself
to her, and did so to a greater degree than he realised.

Especially was this the case upon one memorable morning when, piqued
that he should spend so much time in the library, she had followed him
to that retreat.

She had found him absorbed in Luigi da Porto's novel _La Giulietta_, "a
pitiable history that occurred at Verona in the time of Bartolommeo
Scala," and she watched him slyly for some minutes amused by his
preoccupation before interrupting his feast.

"Ah!" she exclaimed at length in pleased surprise, "you have chanced
upon my favourite of all the books in my uncle's library. How many tears
have I shed for these poor lovers but chiefly because I knew no Romeo so
brave and noble and handsome to tempt me to die for him, or so devoted
as to die for me. That was when I was a child of ten, my lord. I have
learned since that such love exists only in novels, and have ceased to
cry for it."

"You are very cynical, sweet lady," he replied, "and unkind to the
novelists, whom I hold in worshipful esteem."

"And I also esteem them. It is precisely because the life they tell of
is so different from my own, in which nothing ever happens, that a
book-cover is for me a magic door by whose opening I escape out of the
unendurable present. Even more than the novels do I love the plays, and
to see them acted is better than to read them, best of all it must be to
act in one. Ah! that would indeed be like living another life."

"True, dear lady," he answered eagerly, "but there is a form of
diversion which to my mind is the most fascinating of all, and that is
the writing of a drama, for in so doing we create a little world of our
own, and control the destinies of the men and women whom we bring into
being."

She shrugged her shoulders. "But I care only to be the author of my own
role."

"And what," he asked, "would you choose that role to be?"

"I would be a Princess beloved by the King of the greatest nation in the
world. Beloved, mark you, not bargained for, but sought out personally
by the King who should love me for myself alone, a manifestly impossible
plot even for a play."

"On the contrary, 't is a good one. Let us collaborate