"Stand not on the order of your going," he growled between his teeth, then grasping with an air of bluff good-fellowship an arm of either squire, he banged them somewhat roughly together. "Nay, arm in arm, as neighbor knights should," he suggested, and so jostled them out of the chamber and conducted them to the buttery, where for the next hour he diverted himself by making them very drunk indeed. XXV ROMEO AND JULIET Brilliana turned to Evander. "Well, Captain Puritan, are you displeased with me?" Evander disclaimed such thought. "Why should I be displeased that you, a King's woman, serve the King?" Brilliana was pertinacious. "If you were a King's man would you applaud me?" "If I were a King's man," Evander confessed, "I could not choose but applaud you." "But being a Puritan?" Brilliana persisted. "Why," said Evander, "being a Puritan, I must ask you, were you just to your victims?" Brilliana swept them away disdainfully. "Each would have cheated the King in an hour, when, to all who think with me, to cheat the King is little better than to cheat God. But your scrupulosity need not shiver. If the King do not knight my misers I will requite them, little as they deserve it." Evander admired her. "You are a brave lady." Brilliana gave a sigh. "No, I am not brave at all; I am newly very timid. I am frightened of the real world now, and feel only at my ease with shadows." "Shall we journey into shadow-land?" Evander asked. "By what path?" Brilliana questioned. Evander touched a brown, torn book. "Shall we read again in Master Shakespeare's book?" For indeed they had read much in his pages that morning. Brilliana looked pleased. "Yes, indeed. Let us go into my paradise." She looked into the garden and came back with a shiver. "Ah, no, it is raining. It rained when the King raised his standard at Nottingham. Well, well, we can read here." Evander was turning the leaves. "What shall we read? Comedy, history, tragedy?" Brilliana was for the solemn mask. "Let it be tragedy. I have laughed so much this morning that my mind turns to melancholy." Evander looked up at her with his finger on a page. "Shall we read 'Romeo and Juliet'?" "I know that play by root of heart," Brilliana said. "Truly, so do I," said Evander. Brilliana was silent, pensive, a finger on her lip, considering some project. Then she said, doubtfully: "You spoke the other day of women players, a thing that seemed to me incredible. Shall we see how it would seem here for us two? Let us while away a wet morning by playing a stage play." Evander's heart leaped. "With you for the sweet scene in the garden," he cried. In a moment Brilliana was busy in the setting of her scene. She pulled round a heavy, high-backed chair and leaped into it, leaning over the back and looking up as if the painted ceiling glowed with the stars of an Italian night. Then the words flowed from her, the wonderful words: