She dare not give her mind to the grim matter, which, asleep or awake, encompassed it. Dressing in a fever of haste, as if she feared to be overtaken by the thoughts she dare not face, she went out of doors into the keen morning air. She walked up and down by the banks of the mist-enveloped river, and in the hope of composing her over-wrought mind, she began to repeat the lines of her part.
Suddenly she was aware that a figure was emerging dimly from the mists ahead. It was that of a man. A moment afterwards she had recognized the author of “As You Like It.”
The playwright came toward her. He too had slept but little. And in that somber and wonderful face was a haggard weariness that made the soul of the girl recoil. It was the face of a man besieged and tormented by a thousand devils; of a man who had never known a moment of peace in this life, and who hardly looked to know it in the life to come.
Not so much as a word of greeting passed between them. But as the player saw the face of young and delicate fairness, seared already by the anguish of the soul, he placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder with a gentleness of pity that meant very much more than speech.
“Be of good courage, mistress,” that gesture seemed to say.
Without speaking a word, the player passed on like a wraith into the mists that hung as a pall upon the river.
Gervase also was early abroad. He too had slept little. Seated at the window of his room, brooding with a sick heart on the chances of his fate, he had seen Anne go forth, so that presently he followed her.
For long enough they walked together, and for the last time as they believed. A few hours hence all would be decided. And in their hearts their hope of life and perhaps their desire of it was very slender.
Their sufferings of the past few weeks had been bitter. This morning they were overborne. Whatever fate held in store for them now they felt they had reached the nadir of the soul.
Soon after nine o’clock that morning the Lord Chamberlain’s servants embarked in two of the royal barges that had been placed at their disposal. The progress was slow but comfortable, and by noon of a glorious July day they had come to the palace at Richmond. All the players, with one exception, from the most important to the humblest member of the Company, betrayed evidences of anxiety and nervousness. William Shakespeare alone was so cool and collected that the occasion might have been of the most ordinary kind.