An approaching step echoing on the marble terrace warned him that he was no longer alone. He reseated himself at his writing-table, and feigned to be deeply engrossed in perusing various documents, but a ready smile greeted the intruder as soon as he perceived who it was,--one Sir Roger de Launay, his favourite equerry and intimate personal friend. “Time’s up, is it, Roger?” he queried lightly,--then as the equerry bowed in respectful silence--“And yet I have scarcely glanced at these papers! All the same, I have not been idle--I have been thinking.” Sir Roger de Launay, a tall handsome man, with an indefinable air of mingled good-nature and lassitude about him which suggested the possibility of his politely urging even Death itself not to be so much of a bore about its business, smiled doubtfully. “Is it a wise procedure, Sir?” he enquired--“Conducive to comfort I mean?” The King laughed. “No--I cannot say that it is! But thought is a tonic which sometimes restores a man’s enfeebled self-respect. I was beginning to lose that particular condition of health and sanity, Roger!--my self-respect was becoming a flaccid muscle--a withering nerve;--but a little thought-exercise has convinced me that my mental sinews are yet on the whole strong!” Sir Roger offered no reply. His eyes expressed a certain languid wonderment; but duty being paramount with him, and his immediate errand being to remind his sovereign of an appointment then about due, he began to collect the writing materials scattered about on the table and put them together for convenient removal. The smile on the King’s face deepened as he watched him. “You do not answer me, De Launay,”--he resumed, “You think perhaps that I am talking in parables, and that my mind has been persuaded into a metaphysical and rambling condition by an hour’s contemplation of the sunlight on the sea! But come now!--have you not yourself felt a longing to break loose from the trammels of conventional routine,--to be set free from the slavery of answering another’s beck and call,--to be something more than my attendant and friend----” “Sir, more than your friend I have never desired to be!” said Sir Roger, simply. The King extended his hand with impulsive quickness, and Sir Roger as he clasped it, bent low and touched it with his lips. There was no parasitical homage in the act, for De Launay loved his sovereign with a love little known at courts; loyally, faithfully, and without a particle of self-seeking. He had long recognized the nobility, truth and courage which graced and tempered the disposition of the master he served, and knew him to be one, if not the only, monarch in the world likely to confer some lasting benefit on his people by his reign.