Meanwhile, Hughes's fight to retain control of his businesses — to avoid being deemed insane — gets its own pseudo-romantic twist with his realization that, were he married, he couldn't be committed without his wife's approval.
Right or wrong, sincere or disingenuous, the paradox is that we can be committed without being vocal.
Under the proposal put forward last week, men convicted of sex with an underage girl before 11 November this year would be pardoned if they married their victim, as long as the act was committed without "force, threat or any other restriction on consent".
And we must not forget that some of the most heinous crimes in war have been committed without explosives, indeed, without the need for any particular weapon at all.
The 1960 novel, unlike the book published in 2015, is committed without being preachy.
Even a number of Democrats nodded when the speaker of the House, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, complained that U.S. military resources had been committed without defining the mission.
"When you don't have the knife of quotas at your throat, it's easy to say you're committed without actually doing anything about it".
Instead, the show's deliberately paced six hours turn out to be riveting, precisely because they are committed, without apology or, often, much explanation, to the esotericism of their subject matter.
Not so easily rectified, as conspiracy theories proliferated, was the surge in anxiety that high crimes were being committed without our knowledge by secret government agencies, or corporations, or the Mafia, the Cubans or the Soviets.
"There is no way a high-level operation of this kind was committed without the direct knowledge of the secretariat," said a diplomat who has spoken with rebel leaders several times.
