He turned away from the parapet of the bridge, and, passing up Great George Street, continued his way by Birdcage Walk. He had not moved very rapidly. It was now eleven o'clock. He had paused frequently on the way, and more than once he had thought of telegraphing to her, but something, he did not try to find out, had stopped him. 'I can explain all when I see her,' he had two or three times said to himself. And then, with a mental shudder, he had added, 'Can I? Ah! can I?' He had a theory that nothing cleared up a man's mind so much as a long walk. The variety of objects and persons, the exhibition of various arts and trades and occupations in operation, dwarfed one's personality. The manifestation of multitudinous interests, the cries and sounds, the broken sentences caught from mouth after mouth as he went by, enlarged the horizon, and placed a man more in the position of an audience than an improvisatore. In a room, or any small circumscribed place, a man's own importance insisted on attention; but out in this great bustling world of London, who but a fool could think his own affairs, worldly or spiritual, of much moment? At Buckingham Palace he drew up. Although the day was dull and cheerless, and the streets and roads covered with a thin slippery layer of glutinous mud, many idle people were abroad. Here, at his back, was the town residence of the Sovereign, the most constitutional, the mightiest ruler in the world. Generation after generation had come down, through various channels, the noble blood which flowed in her veins. What history was so free from records of tyranny as that of England? In old times, when people knew no better, deplorable acts had been done. But then the general condition of things was, from our point of view, deplorable. Bit by bit our great Constitution had been put together. Bit by bit our great Empire had been built up. Over the great Council of this Empire for two hundred years the lawful sovereign had reigned in almost unbroken peace and security. There was no empire in the world in which it was not possible to realise a plot to dethrone the sovereign but England. One could conceive an outburst of socialism in Germany, attended with danger to the Emperor. But if any man said there was in England a conspiracy to remove the Queen from the throne, we should look upon him as one suffering from acute hallucination. The rulers of England had come down through generation after generation hand-in-hand with the people. Here was St James's Park, into which the windows of the royal residence looked, and in which Her Majesty could see many of the least rich or gifted of her subjects enjoying themselves quietly and innocently. What an anachronism these sentinels outside the Palace were! Did the wildest for a moment fancy anyone wanted to harm the Queen? But then there were those two mounted men at the Horse Guards; and yet it was to be supposed no one thought any burglar had an intention of carrying off the clock.