‘I am afraid I have been hasty, after all,’ he murmured; ‘this Talbot is ill to deal with, and suspicious as the devil. If I tell him in what peril his communications have placed me, and that therefore I have destroyed his cypher, he will not believe me, though it is the truth. I must tell him that it has been destroyed by accident, and that therefore I dare not write him what he wishes, and that he will not believe either. If incredulity were genius, then indeed he would be a very clever fellow, but not otherwise. Great heavens! what rubbish he writes and calls it poetry. No, no, no,’ he muttered with knitted brows, ‘not _that_, Master Reginald, at any price. And yet how mad it will make him to find it is not so. He will do me a mischief if he can, no doubt. However, he will know nothing till it is too late. Next Saturday will put me out of the reach of harm. Would it were Saturday, and all were well. That’s Shakespeare, by the bye, save that he says supper time. A bad augury—a bad augury. The Ides of March are come, but they have not yet gone.’ Here he took another turn up and down the room. ‘I wonder whether, with all his knowledge of humanity, Shakespeare ever knew a man who suffered like me. I wonder whether he sees me now, and knows about it. A strange thought indeed, and yet it may be so. Perhaps his great soul, which understands it all, has pity on me. Will _she_ pity me? A still more momentous question. Pity is akin to love, he says, when love comes last. If love comes first, will pity follow it? What thoughts could I set down this moment were I in the mood for it; and yet they say I am no more a poet than this Talbot. He a poet! The vain drivelling fool; curse his false heart and prying eyes! I hate him.’ CHAPTER XXX. THE PLAY. THE first night of one new play is much the same as that of another, I suppose, all the world over. The opening and shutting of doors, the rustling of silks and satins, the murmur of expectancy, cannot hush the beating of the young author’s breast, as he sits at the back of the box and longs, like the sick man, for the morning. Everybody who is anybody (a charming phrase indicating about one billionth of the human race) is there. Men of fashion and women of wit: gossips and critics; playwriters who have been damned and hope for company in their Inferno; playwriters who have succeeded, with no love for a new rival; the fast and the loose. Lights everywhere, but as much difficulty in finding places as though it were dark; mute recognitions, whispered information (’A dead failure, they tell me.’ ‘The best thing since the “School for Scandal”’); fashionable titters; consumption with her ill-bred cough. These are things peculiar to all first nights, but the first night of ‘a newly discovered play by William Shakespeare’ was, as one may imagine, something exceptional.