“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 climbed the steps.  The wide vestibule was empty except for two men who stopped a low-toned conversation to look at me.  I wondered whether they recognized me; that I might be recognized was an alarming possibility which had not occurred to me.

“Who is speaking?” I asked.

“Mr. Krebs,” answered the taller man of the two.

The hum of applause came from behind the swinging doors.  I pushed them open cautiously, passing suddenly out of the cold into the reeking, heated atmosphere of a building packed with human beings.  The space behind the rear seats was filled with men standing, and those nearest glanced around with annoyance at the interruption of my entrance.  I made my way along the wall, finally reaching a side aisle, whence I could get sight of the platform and the speaker.

I heard his words distinctly, but at first lacked the faculty of stringing them together, or rather of extracting their collective sense.  The phrases indeed were set ringing through my mind, I found myself repeating them without any reference to their meaning; I had reached the peculiar pitch of excitement that counterfeits abnormal calm, and all sense of strangeness at being there in that meeting had passed away.  I began to wonder how I might warn Krebs, and presently decided to send him a note when he should have finished speaking—­but I couldn’t make up my mind whether to put my name to the note or not.  Of course I needn’t have entered the hall at all:  I might have sent in my note at the side door.