d plainly split into two even parties.
G.J. began to resent the harshness of the disciplinarians.

"I think we should remember," he said in his modest voice, "I think we
should remember that we are dealing with adult men and women."

The libertarians at once took him for their own. The disciplinarians
gave him to understand with their eyes that it might have been better
if he, as a new member attending his first meeting, had kept silence.
The discussion was inflamed. One or two people glanced surreptitiously
at their watches. The hour had long passed six thirty. G.J. grew
anxious about his rendezvous with Christine. He had enjoined
exactitude upon Christine. But the main body of the excited and happy
committee had no thought of the flight of time. The amusements of the
tiny town came up for review. As a fact, there was only one amusement,
the cinema. The whole town went to the cinema. Cinemas were
always darkened; human nature was human nature.... G.J. had an
extraordinarily realistic vision of the hospital staff slaving through
its long and heavy day and its everlasting week and preparing in
sections to amuse itself on certain evenings, and thinking with
pleasant anticipation of the ecstasies of the cinema, and pathetically
unsuspicious that its fate was being decided by a council of
omnipotent deities in the heaven of a London hotel.

"Mamma has never mentioned the subject to me," said Lady Queenie in
response to a question, looking at her rich muff.

"This is a question of principle," said somebody sharply, implying
that at last individual consciences were involved and that the
opinions of the Marchioness of Lechford had ceased to weigh.

"I'm afraid it's getting late," said the impassive chairman. "We must
come to some decision."

In the voting Lady Queenie, after hesitation, raised her hand with the
disciplinarians. By one vote the libertarians were defeated, and the
dalliance of the hospital staff in leisure hours received a severe
check.

"She _would_--of course!" breathed a sharp-nosed little woman in the
chair next but one to G.J., gazing inimically at the lax mouth and
cynical eyes of Lady Queenie, who for four years had been the subject
of universal whispering, and some shouting, and one or two ferocious
battles in London.

Chair-legs scraped. People rose here and there to go as they rise in
a music hall after the Scottish comedian has retired, bowing, from
his final encore. They protested urgent ap