Judith's face clouded.
"When you were a boy—was the shadow there already?" she asked.
"I think that it must have been, although I didn't know it," the King muttered. "I expect it was my own fault—but I was lonely. I knew, I think we all knew—that we were not like other children. It wasn't until I went to sea that—I was able to forget that I was a Prince!"
"Poor, lonely, little Prince!" Judith murmured. "But when he went to sea, he was happy?"
"The sea knocked a lot of nonsense out of me," the King replied. "At sea, a man is a man, and nothing else. When I had learnt that, I was happy."
Then the Imps burst in upon them, and the play was at an end.
Judith drove the Imps before her, into the house.
For them—a light supper, and then, an early bedtime.
The King made his way into the house in turn.
It was time to dress for dinner.