ing speaks of love, and that fate is in league
against her with Pandarus and Troilus: it is but an appearance, the
effect of her own imagination, and produced by her state of mind; in
reality it happens simply that now the little incidents of life impress
her more when they relate to love; the others pass so unperceived that
love alone has a place. She might have felt anxious about herself if she
had discerned this difference between then and now; but the blindness
has commenced, she does not observe that the things appertaining to love
find easy access to her heart, and that, where one enters so easily, it
is usually that the door is open. She paces in her melancholy mood the
gardens of the palace; while she wanders through the shady walks, a
young girl sings a song of passion, the words of which stir Cressida to
her very soul. Night falls,

And whyte thinges wexen dimme and donne;

the stars begin to light the heavens; Cressida returns pensive; the
murmurs of the city die out. Leaning at her window, facing the blue
horizon of Troas, with the trees of the garden at her feet, and bathed
in the pale glimmers of the night, Cressida dreams, and as she dreams a
melody disturbs the silence: hidden in the foliage of a cedar, a
nightingale is heard; they too, the birds, celebrate love. And when
sleep comes, of what will she think in her dreams if not of love?

She is moved, but not vanquished; it will take yet many incidents; they
will all be small, trivial, insignificant, and will appear to her
solemn, superhuman, ordered by the gods. She may recover, at times,
before Pandarus, her presence of mind, her childlike laugh, and baffle
his wiles: for the double-story continues. Cressida is still able to
unravel the best-laid schemes of Pandarus, but she is less and less able
to unravel the tangled web of her own sentiments. The meshes draw
closer; now she promises a sisterly friendship: even that had been
already invented in the fourteenth century. She can no longer see
Troilus without blushing; he passes and bows: how handsome he is!

... She hath now caught a thorn;
She shal not pulle it out this next wyke.
God sende mo swich thornes on to pyke![515]

The passion and merits of Troilus, the inventions of
Pandarus, the secret good-will of Cressida, a thunderstorm which breaks
out opportunely (we know how impressionable Cressida is), lead to the
result which might be expected: the two lovers are face to face.