"'To what base uses we may return, Horatio!'" added Frank.
"Yes," she replied; "'Imperial Cæsar, dead and turn'd to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away.'" And she recited the verses which close the scene.
Frank listened with a sort of religious tenderness.
"You love Shakespeare?" he asked.
"I adore him!"
Attracted by this new bond of common admiration, they spoke of that sovereign master of souls, and exchanged the emotions which he had aroused in their hearts. Hand in hand they wandered, and lost themselves in that vast, murmurous forest filled with alarms and enchantments, with refreshing springs and hideous pools, with jocund imps and menacing monsters, where the fairy flowers of sentiment bloom and fade in the umbrage of gigantic thoughts, amidst which passes, like a stormy wind, a tremor of the vague Beyond, the breath of the invisible, unknown world.
As they conversed thus, seated upon an old sofa between the skeleton and the portrait of Lady Mowbray, Reynolds entered. For two hours they had been together. The painter looked at them, and smiled with indulgent penetration.
"We have been talking of Shakespeare," Frank explained, slightly ill at ease.
Sir Joshua did not believe one word of it. Either he knew not, or he had forgotten that old age alone requires to speak of love. In youth, love impregnates every word, insinuates itself into the very gestures, plunges into the glance, exhales at every pore, saturates the air we breathe. Then of what import are words?
"And there is Reuben waiting all this while!" thought Esther suddenly.