At this point Kwang announced that he wished to visit another patient, and that he would leave us together so that I might have a long talk undisturbed. It was evident that he occupied a privileged position, or he would never have been able to have such access to these patients. When he had left the room I did my best to get Mr. Stillman to talk, but I hardly knew how to induce him to tell me his story. I said, "I suppose you are not treated badly, apart from this prohibition about conversing with your fellow-sufferers?" "We are fed with the exact amount of food we require," he replied; "we are clothed--and thank God we do not wear any of the seven uniforms; and we are decently warm, except sometimes in winter when, I suppose, something goes wrong with the apparatus." "What?" I said. "Can any apparatus go wrong in Meccania?" "Well," he said, "perhaps the fact is that I want to be warmer than the experts think is necessary. Yes; that is probably the explanation." "And for the rest," I said. "Have you no occupation? How do you spend the time?" "In trying to preserve the last remains of my sanity," he answered. "And by what means?" I asked gently. "Chiefly by prayer and meditation," he replied after a short pause. He used the old-fashioned expressions which I had not heard from the lips of any Meccanian before. "But it is difficult," he went on, "to keep one's faith, cut off from one's fellow-believers." "But they allow you to attend religious services surely?" I said. "The Meccanian State Church keeps a chaplain here, and holds a service every day which is attended by all the officials and a few of the patients; but you have heard the maxim _Cujus regio ejus religio_, have you not?" I nodded. "It has acquired a new significance during the last fifty years. I have not attended any of the services since they ceased to be compulsory about ten years ago." "That sounds very remarkable," I said. "What does?" "It is the first time I have heard of anything _ceasing_ to be compulsory in Meccania," I said. "The fact was that they discovered it had a very bad effect upon the disease. My chief relief now is reading, which is permitted for three hours a day." "And you are allowed to choose your own books?"