ved like an impulsive fool. He had been ridiculous before
the committee. What should have been a triumph was a disaster. The
committee would bind their two names together. And at the conclusion
of the meeting news of the affairs would radiate from the committee's
offices in every direction throughout London. And he had been unfair
to Concepcion. Their relations would be endlessly complicated by the
episode. He foresaw trying scenes, in which she would make all the
excuses, between her and himself.

"Perhaps it would be simpler if we decided to admit Nurse Smaith's
claim," said a timid voice from the other end of the table.

G.J. murmured coldly, gazing at the agenda paper and yet dominating
his committee:

"The question will come up on the minutes of the Hospitals Management
Sub-committee. We had better deal with it then. The next business on
the agenda is the letter from the Paris Service de Sante."

He was thinking: "How is she now? Ought I to go out and see?" And the
majority of the committee was vaguely thinking, not without a certain
pleasurable malice: "These Society women! They're all queer!"

Chapter 37

THE INVISIBLE POWERS

Several times already the rumour had spread in the Promenade that the
Promenade would be closed on a certain date, and the Promenade had not
been closed. But to-night it was stated that the Promenade would be
closed at the end of the week, and everybody concerned knew that the
prophecy would come true. No official notice was issued, no person
who repeated the tale could give a reliable authority for it;
nevertheless, for some mysterious reason it convinced. The rival
Promenade had already passed away. The high invisible powers who ruled
the world of pleasure were moving at the behest of powers still higher
than themselves; and the cloak-room attendants, in their frivolous
tiny aprons, shared murmuringly behind plush portieres in the woe of
the ladies with large hats.

The revue being a failure, the auditorium was more than half empty. In
the Promenade to each man there were at least five pretty ladies, and
the ladies looked gloomily across many rows of vacant seats at the
bright proscenium where jocularities of an exacerbating tedium were
being enacted. Not that the jocularities were inane beyond the usual,
but failure made them seem so. None had the slightest idea why the
revue had failed; for precisely similar revues, concocted according to
the same recipe and full of th