Yes. The lightning conductor was in position.
He, the man who wore the Crown, must not fail.
He must not fail the Duke.
It was odd, but the thought that he might fail to support the Duke, that he might not come up to the standard which the Duke might set for him, had more weight with him, than any thought of the people, of the nation. It was an instance of the Duke's personal magnetism, of course. His personal magnetism, his dominance, had been talked about for years. Did the Duke dominate him? No. But the Duke was a living, forceful personality, a man, a strong man. The people, the nation—well, they were only phantoms; they were the thousand, flushed, curious faces; the thousand eyes; the cheering crowds, far away down there, in the darkness, in the crowded parks and illuminated streets below.
It was, in a sense, a triumph, or at least, a notable success, for the Duke, that he, the King, had been crowned; that the day had passed without hostile demonstrations, without a single regrettable incident. What reward could he give, what return could he make, to the old statesman, for his ungrudging, tireless service? The Duke was his servant. In intimate, familiar talk, he never failed to call him "sir." The Duke must be his friend. His friend? A King could have no friends. A man apart, isolated, lonely, and remote, as his father had always been, a King was condemned to live alone.
A sudden, unbearable sense of loneliness, a terror of himself, a terror of this new, isolated, remote life, in which he was to be denied even the poor palliative of friendship, swept over the King. He had longed to be alone. He had come up, out here, on to the palace roof, to be alone. He had been eager to escape from the curious faces, from the thousand eyes. But now he longed for human companionship, for human sympathy, for human hands.
"Judith!"
The name rose to the King's lips, unsought, unbidden.
Judith, tall and slender, with her deep, dark, mysterious eyes, and her crown of jet black hair; Judith, with her cheeks flushed with pleasure, her eyes aglow, and her hand stretched out to him in joyous welcome—the King saw, and felt, her bodily presence, as in a vision, and his loneliness, and his terror, his weariness, and his fever, fell from him.
He must go to Judith.