All the crowded events of the long, tense, and exhausting Coronation Day which was, at last, happily at an end had seemed strangely unreal to the King. The slow and stately progress to the Abbey in the morning, the huge gilt state coach, the team of cream horses, the gold-coated powdered footmen, the bodyguard of plumed Household Cavalry, the decorated streets, the crowds, the wild cheering, the thousand faces, the thousand eyes, his own mechanical bowing, his own mechanical smile; the protracted, exhausting ceremony in the Abbey, the ermine-caped peers and peeresses, the grotesque gorgeously clad officers of state, the tall figure of the venerable Archbishop with his hands raised in benediction, his own heavy royal robes, the Crown, the bursts of music and of song, the pealing bells, the brilliant uniforms of the soldiery; the streets once again, the crowds and the wild cheering, his own mechanical bowing, his own mechanical smile, the heat, the glitter and the glare, the tension, the thousand flushed curious faces, the thousand eyes, the slow movement of the coach, the secret, hidden, inward fear; the all too short rest in the afternoon, with its few minutes of troubled, nightmare sleep; the interminable state banquet in the evening, the gold plate, the uniforms, the colours, and the lights, the Family, strangely subservient, the congratulations, the speeches, the homage; the dense crowd round the palace after the banquet, his own repeated appearance at the huge, open window above the main entrance, the night air, the thousand eyes yet once again, the cheering, and the lights--all these things had been unreal, unbelievable, the bewildering phantasmagoria of a fevered dream-- Now, as he leant against the roof balustrade, the same sense of unreality which had haunted him all day was still with him. But he compelled himself to look at the blazing illuminations, none the less. A man could not afford to live, indefinitely, in a fevered dream.