"You want me to return to the palace, with you, at once?" the King asked. "I have no wish to hurry you, sir," the Duke replied. "But the sooner you return to the palace, and the Royal Standard is run up again on the palace flagstaff, the sooner will the existing state of a national emergency be at an end." "I will come with you at once," the King said. "But first of all--I must take leave of my friends." His eyes were fixed, as he spoke, on Judith, who had just reappeared, alone, on the verandah. The Duke followed the King's glance. Then he fell back, two or three paces, and bowed with the hint of formality by which he was in the habit of suggesting, so subtly, and yet so unmistakably, that he was dealing with--the King. The King moved straight across the lawn to Judith. Judith stepped down from the verandah, and came slowly forward towards him. They met on the edge of the lawn. "I am going back to town, at once, with the Duke," the King announced. "The Duke has come to fetch me. The crisis is over. The strike has failed. But you know that, of course--" He paused there, for a moment, suddenly conscious of the utter ineptitude of what he was saying-- And then words came to him, fitting words, words to which, up to then, he had given no thought, but in which all his feelings for, all his thoughts about, Judith, so long suppressed, seemed, suddenly, to crystallize, and find inevitable expression-- "If thanks were necessary between us, I would thank you for all that you have done for me," he said. "But thanks are not necessary between us, are they? Where there is--friendship--there is no need for thanks. You said, yesterday, that you knew that there could be no change in our friendship, and that you were content that it should be so. You were right, of course. You are always right. You said what you did to reassure me, to relieve my anxiety, to remove the uncertainty about--our position--which was troubling me, although I was hardly aware that that was my trouble. What you said did reassure me. It did relieve my anxiety. But now, I want to say something, as plainly as I can, to you. It seems to me that what I have to say is--due to you-- "If I were merely Alfred, the sailor, of our friendship, I should stay here, now, with you. I should stay with you always. I should ask you to join your life to mine. I should ask you to make--Paradise--for me, wherever we were. If I were merely Alfred, the sailor, you would say--yes--gladly-- "But I am not merely Alfred, the sailor. I am--the King. Alfred, the sailor is--dead. Is it his epitaph that I am speaking now? I--the King--am going--back to duty. I am going back to try to take hold of my job--in a new way. I am going back, to try to think--first of England, and never of myself. I am trying to do that now-- "But, before I go, I want to make you a promise. I want to--pledge myself--to you, as far as I can. It will give me--a certain satisfaction--to bind myself to you, as far as I can.