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 ceremony.
Yesterday the Duke had looked keenly forward to his excursion. It was
only in those too rarely required robes that he had the sense of being
fully dressed. But to-day not a thought had he of them.

Some clock clove with silver the stillness of the morning. Ere came the
second stroke, another and nearer clock was striking. And now there were
others chiming in. The air was confused with the sweet babel of its many
spires, some of them booming deep, measured sequences, some tinkling
impatiently and outwitting others which had begun before them. And when
this anthem of jealous antiphonies and uneven rhythms had dwindled quite
away and fainted in one last solitary note of silver, there started
somewhere another sequence; and this, almost at its last stroke, was
interrupted by yet another, which went on to tell the hour of noon in
its own way, quite slowly and significantly, as though none knew it.

An