The King decides to abdicate if Parliament does not grant his request. And no one will turn him from this resolve.

Such was the state of affairs when I left the Fort, which had been, for me, the wellspring of inspiration, the stronghold of hopes and dreams; the December fog wrapped itself around me, and I felt a heavy darkness closing over my hopes, my inspiration, and my life. Only one place remained before me — France. And I was certain that I would not return to England, that I would never see its soil again.

The boat sailed from Newhaven at ten o'clock at night; I sat in the car that carried me to it in silence, not uttering a syllable. The parting was so moving that it struck me dumb, and kept me in an atmosphere of contemplation and thought.

My escort "Perry" sank into a silence like mine; for he felt with me, and bore a great loyalty to the royal crown, and so his position had become difficult. He, together with George Allen and Walter Monckton, thought of one thing only: to preserve the crown and the King, and to remove me from the scene with-out my losing my self-respect and my dignity. Perry had been put forward to explain the situation to me and to persuade me that I must give up the King so long as he would not give me up, and then that I should leave

the country while there was still a chance of saving us... The conspiring friends had learned that the King would be in London on December 3, to conduct his business and to meet Mr. Baldwin, and so my departure from the Fort took place during the King's absence from it — this being, of course, a plan contrived by those devoted friends, as I have said. I was turning all this over in my memory as I made my way to the coast, and I thought that there must be other hidden things I had not been able to learn of. And so Perry began talking to me again in all innocence, asking me the reasons that had compelled me to leave the Fort, and with such speed.

I answered him simply that what had driven me to all this was my fear for the King, and then my wish to get out of his way... This friend could not keep up the pretense to the end, and I felt his voice change in an instant as he repeated: "I have never doubted your mature judgment, Wallis. This was the best plan you could have followed. Are you sorry to have left England?" I answered coldly that all I wanted was to get as far away as possible, to any place at all, to be done with this uproar and commotion.

I threw out this phrase in weariness, and felt my head spinning, and matters growing confused, so that I did not know how to break through to the light of deliverance; and I do not know how my question came out, dry and harsh: "And now, tell me, what do you want? And where do you want to arrive?"

He answered once more, calmly: "Matters are more difficult than you