"That is why I said, at the outset, that this is good news which I have brought you, sir; that I could not bring you better news. This is good news, sir. Never have I dared to hope that the battle, which we have been expecting so long, would be joined, at a time, and on ground, so wholly favourable to the forces of law and order. I have no doubt of the adequacy, and the smooth working of the 'Gamma' scheme, in the existing crisis, sir. It will be many years, probably the whole of your reign, perhaps a generation, before the revolutionary extremists in this country recover from the overwhelming disaster towards which they are rushing at this moment." It was then, and not until then, that the King slipped down from his perch on the writing table to his feet. Instinctively, he turned to the row of tall windows, on his right. He wanted light. He wanted air. Outside, in the palace garden, the brilliant morning sunshine lay golden on the green of the grass, and on the darker green of the trees. The whistling of a thrush, perched on a tree near the windows, seemed stridently audible. Behind him, beside the writing table, the Duke stood, motionless, silent, expectant. The magnetism for which the veteran Prime Minister was notorious, the magnetism which he seemed to be able to invoke at will, had not failed him, whilst he talked. For the time being, he had completely dominated the King. But now, the King's own personality reasserted itself, with all the force of a recoil. A bitter realization of his own impotence, of his own insignificance, was the King's first personal thought. It was to be as he had feared, as he had always known, it would be. The battle was joined, the fight for his place in the procession was about to begin, in the market-place, and he, the man most concerned, was the one man who could not take a side. The Duke had gone out of his way to emphasize that fact. "I attach the very greatest importance to the preservation of your absolute neutrality in the present crisis, sir." Neutrality! The most contemptible part a live man could play. "Fight for your place in the procession, Alfred." He was not to be allowed to fight. The decision whether he should fight for his place, step to one side, or fall out, altogether, to the rear, had been taken out of his hands. The desire for self-assertion, for self-expression, which he had felt, so strongly, only an hour or two previously, flamed up, hotly, anew, within the King. An unwilling King, a half-hearted King, he might be; but to be a nonentity, a man of no account-- The very workman, the individual workman, who--in less than an hour now--as the clock struck twelve, would lay down his tools, put on his coat, and leave his work, was of more account than he was! Ignorant, and deceived, as he might be, the individual workman, in striking, would be asserting himself, expressing himself. And he? He could not even strike! If only he could have gone on strike!