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.