me with their silly faces
upturned to mine. There may have been intelligent expressions among them,
but they failed to catch my eye.

I remember being stopped by Grierson as I was going out of the side
entrance. He took my hand and squeezed it, and there was on his face an
odd, surprised look.

"That was the best yet, Hugh," he said.

I went on past him. Looking back on that evening now, it would almost
seem as though the volition of another possessed me, not my own:
seemingly, I had every intention of going on to the National Theatre, in
which Parks had just spoken, and as I descended the narrow stairway and
emerged on the side street I caught sight of my chauffeur awaiting me by
the curb.

"I'm not going to that other meeting," I found myself saying. "I'm pretty
tired."

"Shall I drive you back to the Club, sir?" he inquired.

"No--I'll walk back. Wait a moment." I entered the ear, turned on the
light and scribbled a hasty note to Andrews, the chairman of the meeting
at the National, telling him that I was too tired to speak again that
night, and to ask one of the younger men there to take my place. Then I
got out of the car and gave the note to the chauffeur.

"You're all right, sir?" he asked, with a note of anxiety in his voice.
He had been with me a long time.

I reassured him. He started the car, and I watched it absently as it
gathered speed and turned the corner. I began to walk, slowly at first,
then more and more rapidly until I had gained a breathless pace; in ten
minutes I was in West Street, standing in front of the Templar's Hall
where the meeting of the Citizens Union west in progress. Now that I had
arrived there, doubt and uncertainty assailed me. I had come as it were
in spite of myself, thrust onward by an impulse I did not understand,
which did not seem to be mine. What was I going to do? The proceeding
suddenly appeared to me as ridiculous, tinged with the weirdness of
somnambulism. I revolted, walked away, got as far as the corner and stood
beside a lamp post, pretending to be waiting for a car. The street lights
were reflected in perpendicular, wavy-yellow ribbons on the wet asphalt,
and I stood staring with foolish intentness at this phenomenon, wondering
how a painter would get the effect in oils. Again I was walking back
towards the hall, combating the acknowledgment to myself that I had a
plan, a plan that I did not for a moment believe I would carry out. I was
shivering.

I climb