He liked the chit.

Presently, with a page-boy, he was ascending in a lift through storey after storey of silent carpeted desert.  Light alternated with darkness, winking like a succession of days and nights as seen by a god.  The infant showed him into a private parlour furnished and decorated in almost precisely the same taste as Christine’s sitting-room, where a number of men and women sat close together at a long deal table, whose pale, classic simplicity clashed with the rest of the apartment.  A thin, dark, middle-aged man of austere visage bowed to him from the head of the table.  Somebody else indicated a chair, which, with a hideous, noisy scraping over the bare floor, he modestly insinuated between two occupied chairs.  A third person offered a typewritten sheet containing the agenda of the meeting.  A blonde girl was reading in earnest, timid tones the minutes of the previous meeting.  The affair had just begun.  As soon as the minutes had been passed the austere chairman turned and said evenly: 

“I am sure I am expressing the feelings of the committee in welcoming among us Mr. Hoape, who has so kindly consented to join us and give us the benefit of his help and advice in our labours.”

Sympathetic murmurs converged upon G.J. from the four sides of the table, and G.J. nervously murmured a few incomprehensible words, feeling both foolish and pleased.  He had never sat on a committee; and as his war-conscience troubled him more and more daily, he was extremely anxious to start work which might placate it.  Indeed, he had seized upon the request to join the committee as a swimmer in difficulties clasps the gunwale of a dinghy.

A man who kept his gaze steadily on the table cleared his throat and said: 

“The matter is not in order, Mr. Chairman, but I am sure I am expressing the feelings of the committee in proposing a vote of condolence to yourself on the terrible loss which you have sustained in the death of your son at the Front.”

“I beg to second that,” said a lady quickly.

“Our chairman has given his only son—­”

Tears came into her eyes; she seemed to appeal for help.  There were “Hear, hears,” and more sympathetic murmurs.

The proposer, with his gaze still steadily fixed on the table, said: 

“I beg to put the resolution to the meeting.”

“Yes,” said the chairman with calm self-control in the course of his acknowledgment.  “And if I had ten sons I would willingly give them all—­for the cause.”  And his firm, hard glance appeared to challenge any member of the committee to assert that this profession of parental and patriotic generosity of heart was not utterly sincere.  However, nobody had the air of doubting that if the chairman had had ten sons, or as many sons as Solomon, he would have sacrificed them all with the most admirable and eager heroism.