thin the hotel the glowing Gold Hall, whose Lincrusta Walton panels
dated it, was nearly empty. Of the hundred small round tables only one
was occupied; a bald head and a large green hat were almost meeting
over the top of this table, but there was nothing on it except an
ashtray. A waiter wandered about amid the thick plushy silence and the
stagnant pools of electric light, meditating upon the curse which
had befallen the world of hotels. The red lips beneath the green
hat discernibly moved, but no faintest murmur therefrom reached the
entrance. The hot, still place seemed to be enchanted.

The sight of the hotel flower-stall recessed on the left reminded G.J.
of Christine's desire. Forty thousand skilled women had been put out
of work in England because luxury was scared by the sudden vista of
war, but the black-garbed girl, entrenched in her mahogany bower, was
still earning some sort of a livelihood. In a moment, wakened out of
her terrible boredom into an alert smile, she had sold to G.J. a bunch
of expensive chrysanthemums whose yellow petals were like long curly
locks. Thoughtless, he had meant to have the flowers delivered at
once to Christine's flat. It would not do; it would be indiscreet. And
somehow, in the absence of Braiding, it would be equally indiscreet to
have them delivered at his own flat.

"I shall be leaving the hotel in about an hour; I'll take them away
myself then," he said, and inquired for the headquarters of the
Lechford French Hospitals Committee.

"Committee?" repeated the girl vaguely. "I expect the Onyx Hall's what
you want." She pointed up a corridor, and gave change.

G.J. discovered the Onyx Hall, which had its own entrance from the
street, and which in other days had been a cafe lounge. The precious
pavement was now half hidden by wooden trestles, wooden cubicles,
and cheap chairs. Temporary flexes brought down electric light from
a stained glass dome to illuminate card-indexes and pigeon-holes and
piles of letters. Notices in French and Flemish were suspended from
the ornate onyx pilasters. Old countrywomen and children in rough
foreign clothes, smart officers in strange uniforms, privates
in shabby blue, gentlemen in morning coats and spats, and untidy
Englishwomen with eyes romantic, hard, or wistful, were mixed together
in the Onyx Hall, where there was no enchantment and little order,
save that good French seemed to be regularly spoken on one side of
the trestles and regularl