"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," Phœbe said. "Pray be seated, good my pupil, come."
Then, seated there by Phœbe's side, the poet committed to paper the whole of Jacques's speech on "The Seven Ages," just as Phœbe 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. Phœbe 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.
At length the poet, without other change in position, turned his head and looked searchingly and seriously into the young girl's eyes. What amazing quality was it that stamped its impress upon the maiden's face—a something he had never seen or dreamed of? Even a Shakespeare could give no name to that spirit of the future out of which she had come.
"Is it then true?" he said, in an undertone. "Doth the muse live? Not a mere prompting inward sense, but in bodily semblance visiting the poet's eye? Or art thou a creature of Fancy's colors blended, feigning reality?"
Never before had the glamour of her situation so penetrated her to whom these words were addressed. She was choked by an irrepressible sob that was half a laugh, and a film of moisture obscured her vision. With a sudden movement, she seized the poet's hand and pressed it to her lips. Then, half-ashamed, she rose and turned away to toy with the foliage of a shrub that stood beside the path.
"Nay, then!" Shakespeare cried, with something like relief in his voice, "you are no insubstantial spirit, damsel. Yet would I fain more clearly comprehend thee!"