become, in the clarity of next morning, a spruce procession for him to
lead. Brief the vague horror of his awakening; memory sweeps back to
him, and he sees nothing dreadful after all. "Why not?" is the sun's
bright message to him, and "Why not indeed?" his answer. After hours
of agony and doubt prolonged to cock-crow, sleep had stolen to the
Duke's bed-side. He awoke late, with a heavy sense of disaster; but
lo! when he remembered, everything took on a new aspect. He was in
love. "Why not?" He mocked himself for the morbid vigil he had spent
in probing and vainly binding the wounds of his false pride. The old
life was done with. He laughed as he stepped into his bath. Why should
the disseizin of his soul have seemed shameful to him? He had had no
soul till it passed out of his keeping. His body thrilled to the cold
water, his soul as to a new sacrament. He was in love, and that was
all he wished for . . . There, on the dressing-table, lay the two
studs, visible symbols of his love. Dear to him, now, the colours of
them! He took them in his hand, one by one, fondling them. He wished
he could wear them in the day-time; but this, of course, was
impossible. His toilet finished, he dropped them into the left pocket
of his waistcoat.

Therein, near to his heart, they were lying now, as he looked out at
the changed world--the world that had become Zuleika. "Zuleika!" his
recurrent murmur, was really an apostrophe to the whole world.

Piled against the wall were certain boxes of black japanned tin, which
had just been sent to him from London. At any other time he would
certainly not have left them unopened. For they contained his robes of
the Garter. Thursday, the day after to-morrow, was the date fixed for
the investiture of a foreign king who was now visiting England: and
the full chapter of Knights had been commanded to Windsor for the