“Shouldn’t have said that about the flowers,” one of them remarked—a ginger-haired Dutchman in charge of Clerical Deployment. “Unnecessary.”

“I should think,” agreed his friend, Mr. Andrada from Legal Aspects. “If I may say so, not good for morale.”

“Particularly that part about the answer being No.”

“Isn’t it curious,” Mr. Willoughby said to Miss Kingslake, “how uneasy people are made by any show of feeling in official quarters?” He placed his paper napkin under his cup to absorb spilt tea. “I suppose they find it inconsistent. What did you think of those remarks today—I mean, about the flowers?”

Miss Kingslake was still looking out at the broad river and the wasteland of factories on its opposite bank. She held the teacup in both hands, her elbows on the table. “I don’t quite know. I think I felt heartened to hear something said merely because it was felt. Something that—wasn’t even on the agenda. Still, I did find all that stuff about one’s integrity a bit Nordic. After all, it would hardly be possible for most people to get through a working day without compromising their idea of themselves.”

“I think he said ‘secret integrity.’” Mr. Willoughby drank his tea. “We can check it tomorrow in the Provisional Verbatim Record.”

“I suppose,” she conceded, “it would depend on how secret one was prepared to let it become.”

The noise in the cafeteria, like that of a great storm, was beyond all possibility of complaint or remedy. It was a noise in some ways restful to staff members from quiet offices, and Clelia Kingslake was one of these. Eating her cake with a fork, resting her cheek on her left hand, she looked quite at ease—more at ease, in fact, than was appropriate to her type.

“You busy at present?” Mr. Willoughby asked her.

“Oh yes,” she said. (It was a question which had never in the Organization’s history been known to meet with a negative reply.) “We’re finishing up the report on Methods of Enforcement.”

“How is it this year?”

“A much stronger preamble than the last issue. And some pretty tough recommendations in Appendix III.”

Someone leaned over their table. “You using this chair?”

A group of the interpreters had come in. The interpreters were always objects of interest, their work implying an immediacy denied to the rest of the staff. They stacked their manila folders on the heaters and pushed up extra chairs to the table vacated by the officers of Personnel. Two of them went to fetch tea for the entire table. The rest sat down and began to talk loudly, like children let out of the examination room.

“One could see something was coming when he looked up like that.”

“Les fleurs du chagrin … I suppose one could hardly have said Les fleurs du mal.…”

A Russian came back with a loaded tray. “What are you laughing at?”