“That’s like the story of what’s-his-name—Narcissus,” Johannah said.
“With the vastest difference. The hero of my story wasn’t in love with his own image. He was in love with a beautiful princess,” Will explained.
“Then how can you have the face to say that there’s no heroine?” she demanded.
“There isn’t any heroine. At the same time, there’s nothing else. The story’s all about her. You see, she never existed.”
“You said it was a true love-story,” she reproached him.
“So it is—literally true.”
“I asked for a story, and you give me a riddle.” She shook her head.
“Oh, no, it’s a story all the same,” he reassured her. “Its title is Much Ado about Nobody.”
“Oh? It runs in my head that I’ve met with something or other with a similar title before,” she considered.
“Precisely,” said he. “Something or other by one of the Elizabethans. That’s how it came to occur to me. I take my goods where I find them. However, do you want to hear the story?”