“The laws we knew have been abolished by circumstances. It now falls to us to make laws suitable to the conditions, and to enforce them if necessary.”

“There is still God’s law, and the law of decency.”

“Madam. Solomon had three hundred—or was it five hundred?—wives, and God did not apparently hold them against him. A Mohammedan preserves rigid respectability with three wives. These are matters of local custom. Just what our laws in these matters, and in others, will be is for us all to decide later for the greatest benefit of the community.

“This committee, after discussion, has decided that if we are to build a new state of things and avoid a relapse into barbarism—which is an appreciable danger—we must have certain undertakings from those who wish to join us.

“Not one of us is going to recapture the conditions we have lost. What we offer is a busy life in the best conditions we can contrive, and the happiness which will come of achievement against odds. In return we ask willingness and fruitfulness. There is no compulsion. The choice is yours. Those to whom our offer does not appeal are at perfect liberty to go elsewhere and start a separate community on such lines as they prefer.

“But I would ask you to consider very carefully whether or not you do hold a warrant from God to deprive any woman of the happiness of carrying out her natural functions.”

The discussion which followed was a rambling affair, descending frequently to points of detail and hypothesis on which there could as yet be no answers. But there was no move to cut it short. The longer it went on, the less strangeness the idea would have.

Josella and I moved over to the table where Nurse Berr had set up her paraphernalia. We took several shots in our arms and then sat down again to listen to the wrangling.

“How many of them will decide to come, do you think?” I asked her.

She glanced round.

“Nearly all of them—by the morning,” she told me.

I felt doubtful. There was a lot of objecting and questioning going on. Josella said:

“If you were a woman who was going to spend an hour or two before you went to sleep tonight considering whether you would choose babies and an organization to look after you or adherence to a principle which might quite likely mean no babies and no one to look after you, you’d not really be very doubtful, you know. And after all, most women want babies anyway—the husband’s just what Dr. Vorless might call the local means to the end.”

“That’s rather cynical of you.”

“If you really think that’s cynical, you must be a very sentimental character. I’m talking about real women, not those in the world.”

“Oh,” I said.

She sat pensively awhile, and gradually acquired a frown. At last she said;

“The thing that worries me is how many will they expect? I like babies, all right, but there are limits.”

After the debate had gone on raggedly for an hour or so it was wound up. Michael asked that the names of all those willing to join in his plan should be left in his office by ten o’clock the next morning. The Colonel requested all who could drive a truck to report to him by 700 hours, and the meeting broke up.

Josella and I wandered out of doors. The evening was mild. The light on the tower was again stabbing hopefully into the sky. The moon had just risen clear of the museum roof. We found a low wall and sat on it, looking into the shadows of the Square garden and listening to the faint sound of the wind in the branches of the trees there. We smoked a cigarette each almost in silence. When I reached the end of mine I threw it away and drew a breath.

“Josella,” I said.

“M’m?” she replied, scarcely emerging from her thoughts. Josella,” I said again. “Er—those babies. I’d—er—I’d be sort of terribly proud and happy if they could be mine as well as yours.”

She sat quite still for a moment, saying nothing. Then she turned her head. The moonlight was glinting on her fair hair, but her face and eyes were in shadow. I waited, with a hammered and slightly sick feeling inside me. She said, with surprising calm:

“Thank you, Bill dear. I think I would too.”

I sighed. The hammering did not ease up much, and I saw that my hand was trembling as it reached for, hers. I didn’t have any words, for the moment. Josella, however, did. She said:

“But it isn’t quite as easy as that now.”

I was jolted.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She said consideringly: “I think that if I were those people in there”—she nodded in the direction of the tower—”I think that I should make a rule. I should divide us up into lots. I should say every man who marries a sighted girl must take two blind girls as well. I’m pretty sure that’s what I should do.”

I stared at her face in the shadow.

“You don’t mean that,” I protested. “I’m afraid I do, Bill.”

“But look here

“Don’t you think they may have some idea like that in P their minds—from what they’ve been saying?”

“Not unlikely,” I conceded. “But if they make the rule, that’s one thing. I don’t see—“

“You mean you don’t love me enough to take on two other women as well?”

I swallowed. I also objected:

“Look here. This is all crazy. It’s unnatural. What you’re suggesting

She put up a hand to stop me.

“Just listen to me, Bill. I know it sounds a bit startling at first, but there’s nothing crazy about it. It’s all quite clear— and it’s not very easy.

“All this”—she waved her hand around—”it’s done something to me, It’s like suddenly seeing everything differently. And one of the things I think I see is that those of us who get through are going to be much nearer to one another, more dependent on one another, more like—well, more like a tribe than we ever were before.

“All day long as we went about I’ve been seeing unfortunate people who are going to die very soon. And all the time I’ve been saying to myself: ‘There, but for the grace of God…’

And then I’ve told myself: ‘This is a miracle! I don’t deserve anything better than any of these people. But it has happened. Here I still am—so now it’s up to me to justify it.’ Somehow it’s made me feel closer to other people than I have ever done before. That’s made me keep wondering all the time what I can do to help some of them.

“You see, we must do something to justify that miracle, Bill. I might have been any of these blind girls; you might have been any of these wandering men. There’s nothing big we can do. But if we try to look after just a few and give them what happiness we can, we shall be paying back a little—just a tiny part of what we owe. You do see that, don’t you, Bill?”

I turned it over in my mind for a minute or more.

“I think,” I said, “that that’s the queerest argument I’ve heard today—if not ever. And yet—”

“And yet it’s right, isn’t it, Bill? I know it’s right. I’ve tried to put myself in the place of one of those blind girls, and I know. We hold the chance of as full a life as they can have, for some of them. Shall we give it them as part of our gratitude—or shall we simply withhold it on account of the prejudices we’ve been taught? That’s what it amounts to.”

I sat silently for a time. I had not a moment’s doubt that Josella meant every word she said. I ruminated a little on the ways of purposeful, subversive-minded women like Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Fry. You can’t do anything with such women—and they so often turn out to have been right after all.

“Very well,” I said at last. “If that’s the way you think it ought to be. But I hope—”

She cut me short.

“Oh, Bill, I knew you’d understand. Oh, I’m glad—so very glad. You’ve made me so happy.”

After a time:

“I hope—” I began again.