"They have had a wonderful day," Judith whispered. "We ran our flag up, this morning, in honour of the King, and I tried to make them understand about the Coronation. Bill wanted to know if Uncle Alfred would be in the procession! They would do nothing else for the rest of the day, but play at being King. You see, they took their crowns to bed with them." She pointed to two crowns, crude, homemade, cardboard toys, covered with gilt and silver paper, which lay, one on each pillow, beside the sleeping children. A strange thrill, a chill of presentiment, a sense of some impending crisis, which, it seemed, he was powerless to prevent, which he must make no attempt to prevent, ran through the King. He shivered. Then he leant over the cots, and, very carefully, lest he should wake him, picked up the crown which lay on Button's pillow. The crude, grotesque, cardboard toy made a poignant appeal to him. Inevitably this toy cardboard crown reminded the King of that other Crown, from which, even here in Paradise, it seemed, he could not escape, that other Crown which had been placed on his head at the climax of the long and exhausting Coronation ceremony, not many hours back. That other Crown had been heavy. This was light. That other Crown had been fashioned by cunning artists in metal, out of the enduring materials judged most precious by man. This crown had been laboriously patched together by the untried fingers of a child, out of the flimsy, worthless materials furnished by a nursery cupboard. And yet, of the two crowns, was the one more valuable, more worth possessing, than the other? Both were symbols. That other Crown was the symbol of a heavy burden, of a great responsibility. This toy crown was the symbol of a child's fertile imagination, and happy play. Both were pageantry. The one was the pageantry of a lifetime's isolation, and labour. The other was the pageantry of a child's happy play, for a single summer day. The irony of the contrast, the irony of his own position, gripped the King, with a thrill of something akin to physical pain. With the absurd, toy cardboard crown still in his hand, he turned, and looked at Judith. A dimly realized, instinctive rather than conscious, desire for sympathy prompted his look. And Judith failed him. It was not what she did. It was not what she said. She did nothing. She said nothing. And yet, in one of those strange flashes of intuition, which come, at times, to the least sensitive of men, the King was aware that Judith was not herself; that the accord which had hitherto always existed between them was broken; and that he and she had suddenly become--antagonistic. Judith stood with her hands resting lightly on the brass rail at the foot of Button's cot. Outwardly her attitude was wholly passive. None the less, as he gazed at her, the King's intuitive conviction of their new antagonism deepened. An odd, tense, little pause ensued. Then, suddenly, Judith turned, and looked at him.