Fight for his place? Must he fight? A fight was something. The other fellows were treading very hard on his heels. But was his place worth fighting for? Did he want it? He had not chosen it. It had been thrust upon him. The moments of decision, when a man had to choose his place in the files, about which Uncle Bond had spoken so confidently, had never come to him. Moments of decision? What could he, what did he, ever decide? In the very fight for his place, which was impending, he would not be allowed to commit himself. The fight would be fought for him, all around him, and he, the man most concerned, was the one man who could not, who would not be allowed, to take a side. It was all arranged for him. The old Duke of Northborough, the lightning conductor, would take the shock! And the result? Did he know what he wanted? Did he know his own mind? A half-hearted man! What a faculty Uncle Bond had for hitting on a phrase, a sentence, that stuck, that recurred. It described him. A half-hearted King. A half-hearted friend. A half-hearted--lover. But was it altogether his fault? Was it not his position, his intolerable isolation, his responsibility, which, by a bitter paradox, was without responsibility, that had thrown his whole life out of gear, and paralysed his will? As a sailor, in his own chosen profession, with responsibility, with the command of men, he had held his own, more than held his own, with his peers. He had had his place, an honourable place, amongst men of the same seniority as himself, and the Navy took the best men, the pick of the country. Yes. He knew what he wanted now. A moment of decision. A moment in which he could be himself. A moment in which he could assert himself, assert his own individuality, recklessly, violently, prove that he was not a half-hearted man, not an automaton, not an overdressed popinjay-- At this point, the appearance of a certain amount of traffic on the road, as the car swept into the fringe of the outer suburbs, and the more careful driving which it entailed, broke the thread of the King's thoughts. The inevitable lowering of the speed of the car which followed, served to remind him anew that he still had a good deal of time to make up, thanks to his loitering with Uncle Bond, if he was to be successful in effecting his return to the palace unobserved. His rising anxiety about this now all important matter led him thenceforward to concentrate the whole of his attention on his handling of the car. CHAPTER VII