ary answered the call; and presently the Comptroller-General
himself appeared to learn the royal pleasure.

"I am sorry, my dear General," said the King, "to trouble you at so late
an hour. But about that matter of the widow--who is not a widow. I wish
fifty pounds to be sent to her--anonymously. Yes, fifty pounds. Will you
see that it is done to-night?"

Turning to Max he said, as though referring to conversation already
passed, "You have effectually interested me in her case."

Max saw that he was being used as a pawn in a game he did not
understand, and held his tongue; and the Comptroller-General, finding
himself dismissed, retired to do for once as he was told.

And so, by the inglorious device of anonymity and lavishness combined
the King maintained his point, and sent his gift to the relief of one
who was, as a matter of fact, just as legally a widow as any other you
or I may like to name.

John of Jingalo had not yet broken the official leading-strings, but on
this occasion he had circumvented them. Flushed with his triumph, he
bade his son an affectionate good-night. "Come and talk to me again," he
said. "I don't agree with anything you say, but you help me to think."

It was a sign of progress. Hitherto he had relied, with a far greater
sense of security and comfort, on those who had enabled him not to
think. Consultation with Max, insidious as the drug-habit, and as
secretively employed, was henceforth to count for much in the
development of the Constitutional Crisis. Hereditary monarchy had
conceived the idea of turning its hereditary material to account. No
doubt the Cabinet would have objected, preferring to keep its victim in
complete mental isolation; but at present, the Cabinet did not know.

CHAPTER IV

POPULAR MONARCHY

I

That talk with Max formed the preliminary to a month of the most
strenuous verbal and intellectual conflict that the King had ever known.
Outside all was calm: the Constitutional Crisis was in suspension; by
agreement on both sides hostilities had been deferred till trade should
have reaped its full profit out of the Silver Jubilee celebrations. The
papers spoke admiringly of this truce to party warfare as "instinctive
loyalty" on the part of the people, "expressive of their desire to do
honor to a beloved sovereign in a spirit undisturbed by the contending
voices of faction."

There was no "instinctive loyalty," however, within the Cabinet! While
streets w