-am I to stay in the room?
Because," she added, "I have to confess that I am an impure woman."

Everyone looked at her in astonishment.

"You are going to have a baby?" asked Jane.

She nodded her head.

It was extraordinary to see the different expressions on their faces. A
sort of hum went through the room, in which I could catch the words
"impure," "baby," "Castalia," and so on. Jane, who was herself
considerably moved, put it to us:

"Shall she go? Is she impure?"

Such a roar filled the room as might have been heard in the street
outside.

"No! No! No! Let her stay! Impure? Fiddlesticks!" Yet I fancied that
some of the youngest, girls of nineteen or twenty, held back as if
overcome with shyness. Then we all came about her and began asking
questions, and at last I saw one of the youngest, who had kept in the
background, approach shyly and say to her:

"What is chastity then? I mean is it good, or is it bad, or is it
nothing at all?" She replied so low that I could not catch what she
said.

"You know I was shocked," said another, "for at least ten minutes."

"In my opinion," said Poll, who was growing crusty from always reading
in the London Library, "chastity is nothing but ignorance--a most
discreditable state of mind. We should admit only the unchaste to our
society. I vote that Castalia shall be our President."

This was violently disputed.

"It is as unfair to brand women with chastity as with unchastity," said
Poll. "Some of us haven't the opportunity either. Moreover, I don't
believe Cassy herself maintains that she acted as she did from a pure
love of knowledge."

"He is only twenty-one and divinely beautiful," said Cassy, with a
ravishing gesture.

"I move," said Helen, "that no one be allowed to talk of chastity or
unchastity save those who are in love."

"Oh, bother," said Judith, who had been enquiring into scientific
matters, "I'm not in love and I'm longing to explain my measures for
dispensing with prostitutes and fertilizing virgins by Act of
Parliament."

She went on to tell us of an invention of hers to be erected at Tube
stations and other public resorts, which, upon payment of a small fee,
would safeguard the nation's health, accommodate its sons, and relieve
its daughters. Then she had contrived a method of preserving in sealed
tubes the germs of future Lord Chancellors "or poets or painters or
musicians," she went on, "supposing, that is to say, that these breeds
are not e