A wonderful look. A look which amazed, and dumbfounded the King. A look, not of antagonism, as he had anticipated, but, welling up from the depths of her dark, mysterious eyes, a look which spoke, unmistakably, of a woman's tenderness, sympathy, surrender, love. For a breathless moment or two, they stood thus, facing each other. Then Judith bent down, hurriedly, over the cots once again. "If you will go out on to the verandah, Alfred, I will join you there, in a minute or two," she said. Her voice was husky, tremulous, low. Mechanically, the King replaced the absurd toy cardboard crown, which he was still holding in his hand, on Button's pillow. Then, dazed, and like a man in a dream, he swung slowly round on his heel, and passed back, through the room, out to the verandah again. The nightingales were still singing in the garden. The air was heavy with the rich scent of some night-blossoming stock, set in one of the flowerbeds immediately below the verandah rail. The moon was afloat in a little sea of luminous, billowy, drifting clouds. The King sat down in one of the large, wicker work chairs, which always stood on the verandah. He was glad to sit down. He was trembling from head to foot-- It was for rest, and quiet, and peace, that he had run out to see Judith, and between them, all in a moment, they had blundered, together, into the thick of an emotional crisis. How? Why? It was all an inexplicable mystery to him. Where was the white line Judith had always drawn round herself? Where was the barrier of physical reserve she had always maintained inviolable between them? From the first moment of his arrival, he realized now, in some odd way, almost in spite of herself as it were, she had been--alluring! A strange, new Judith! A sudden, queer feeling of resentment stirred within the King. He had been so sure of Judith! She had placed him in an impossible, an intolerable position. No. That was unfair, unjust. Judith was not to blame. Judith did not know--how could she know?--the peculiar difficulties, the inexorable limitations, imposed upon him by his Royal rank. She did not know--how could she know?--that friendship was all he could accept from, all he could offer, to, any woman. To Judith, he was merely a young naval officer, whose frequent visits, whose unmistakable delight in her society, could have only one meaning. He alone was to blame. By his own act, by his own deliberate concealment of his real identity, he had made this crisis inevitable from the first.