The agenda was opened.  G.J. had little but newspaper knowledge of the enterprises of the committee, and it would not have been proper to waste the time of so numerous a company in enlightening him.  The common-sense custom evidently was that new members should “pick up the threads as they went along.”  G.J. honestly tried to do so.  But he was preoccupied with the personalities of the committee.  He soon saw that the whole body was effectively divided into two classes—­the chairmen of the various sub-committees, and the rest.  Few members were interested in any particular subject.  Those who were not interested either stared at the walls or at the agenda paper, or laboriously drew intricate and meaningless designs on the agenda paper, or folded up the agenda paper into fantastic shapes until, when someone in authority brought out the formula, “I think the view of the committee will be—­” a resolution was put and the issue settled by the mechanical raising of hands on the fulcrum of the elbow.  And at each raising of hands everybody felt that something positive had indeed been accomplished.

The new member was a little discouraged.  He had the illusion that the two hospitals run in France for French soldiers by the Lechford Committee were an illusion, that they did not really exist, that the committee was discussing an abstraction.  Nevertheless, each problem as it was presented—­the drains (postponed), the repairs to the motor-ambulances, the ordering of a new X-ray apparatus, the dilatoriness of a French Minister in dealing with correspondence, the cost per day per patient, the relations with the French civil authorities and the French military authorities, the appointment of a new matron who could keep the peace with the senior doctor, and the great principle involved in deducting five francs fifty centimes for excess luggage from a nurse’s account for travelling expenses—­each problem helped to demonstrate that the hospitals did exist and that men and women were toiling therein, and that French soldiers in grave need were being magnificently cared for and even saved from death.  And it was plain, too, that none of these excellent things could have come to pass or could continue to occur if the committee did not regularly sit round the table and at short intervals perform the rite of raising hands....

G.J.’s attention wandered.  He could not keep his mind off the thought that he should soon be seeing Christine again.  Sitting at the table with a mien of intelligent interest, he had a waking dream of Christine.  He saw her just as she was—­ingenuous, and ignorant if you like—­except that she was pure.  Her purity, though, had not cooled her temperament, and thus she combined in herself the characteristics of at least two different women, both of whom were necessary to his happiness.  And she was his wife, and they lived in a roomy house in Hyde Park Gardens, and the war was over.  And she adored him and he was passionately fond of her.  And she was always