How soon would it be, wondered Kitty, before the officials of the Ministry of Brains wore that same look? It must come to them; it must come to all who govern, excepting only the blind, the crass, the impervious. It must have been worn by the members of the Witan during the Danish invasions; by Strafford before 1642; by Pharaoh's councillors when Moses was threatening plagues; by M. Milivkoff before March, 1917; by Mr. Lloyd George during much of the Great War. But it was not worn yet by Nicholas Chester. 2 He sat down by Kitty after dinner. They did not talk shop, but they were linked by the strong bond of shop shared and untalked. There was between them the relationship, unlike any other (for no relationship ever is particularly like any other) of those who are doing, though on very different planes, the same work, and both doing it well; the relationship, in fact, of a government official to his intelligent subordinates. (There is also the relationship of a government official to his unintelligent subordinates; this is a matter too painful to be dwelt on in these pages.) But this evening, as they talked, it became apparent to Kitty that, behind the screen of this relationship, so departmental, so friendly, so emptied of sex, a relationship quite other and more personal and human, which had come into embryo being some weeks ago, was developing with rapidity. They found pleasure in one another this evening as human beings in the world at large, the world outside ministry walls. That was rather fun. And next morning Chester asked her to come a walk with him, and on the walk the new relationship burgeoned like flowers in spring. They did not avoid shop now that they were alone together; they talked of the Department, of the new Act, of the efforts of other countries on the same lines, of anything else they liked. They talked of Russian politics (a conversation I cannot record, the subject being too difficult for any but those who have the latest developments under their eyes, and, indeed, not always quite easy even for them). They talked of the National Theatre, of animals they had kept and cabinet ministers they had known; of poets, pictures, and potato puddings; of, in fact, the things one does talk about on walks. They told each other funny stories of prominent persons; she told him some of the funny stories about himself which circulated in the Ministry; he told her about his experiences when, in order to collect information as to the state of the intelligence of the country before the ministry was formed, he had sojourned in a Devonshire fishing village disguised as a fisherman, and in Hackney Wick disguised as a Jew, and had in both places got the better of everyone round him excepting only the other Hackney Jews, who had got the better of him. (It was in consequence of this that Jews--such Jews as had not yet been forcibly repatriated in the Holy City--were exempted from the provisions of the Mental Progress Act and