‘Which is the fortunate he whose image haunts you?’ asked Gerald, with that languid upward twitch of his dark brows which gracefully expressed a mild drawing-room cynicism. ‘Do these fields suggest grave thoughts about tenant-right or game-laws, or the land question generally? Is it Beaconsfield or Gladstone whose _eidolon_ pursues you?’ ‘Please don’t be disgusting,’ cried Daphne. ‘_Can_ one think of anybody in these meadows except——’ ‘The inevitable William. A man does not live near Stratford with impunity. He must be dosed. Well, child, what are you bursting to say?’ ‘I have been thinking what a happiness it is to know that the dear creature travelled so little,’ responded Daphne; ‘and that whether he talks of Bohemia, or France, or Germany, Rome, Verona, Elsinore, or Inverness——’ ‘Somebody wrote a treatise an inch thick to show that Shakespeare may have gone to Scotland with the king’s players, but I fancy he left his case as hypothetical as he found it,’ interjected Gerald. ‘Whether he talks of Athens—or Africa—he really means Warwickshire,’ pursued Daphne. ‘It is his own native county that is always present to his mind. Florizel and Perdita make love in our meadows. There is the catalogue of flowers just as they bloom to-day. And Rosalind’s cottage was in a lane near the few old oaks which still remain to show where Arden Forest once stood. And poor Ophelia drowned herself in one of the backwaters of our Avon. I can show you the very willow growing aslant the brook.’ ‘A backwater isn’t a brook,’ murmured Edgar mildly. ‘I allow that local colour is not our William’s strong point,’ answered Gerald. ‘Not being a traveller, he would have done better had he never ventured beyond the limits of his Warwickshire experience; for in that case he would not have imagined lions in the streets of Rome, or a sea-coast in Bohemia.’ ‘Wait till you write a play or a novel,’ retorted Daphne, ‘and you’ll find you’ll have to adapt yourself to circumstances.’ ‘That’s exactly what your divine bard did not do. He adapted circumstances to suit his plays.’ CHAPTER XIV. ‘LOVE IS A THING, AS ANY SPIRIT, FREE.’