impress Sheila all at once with a sense of the greatness and grandeur
of London, he made the cabman cut down by Park Crescent and Portland
Place to Regent Circus. Then they went along Oxford street; and there
were crowded omnibuses taking young men into the city, while all
the pavements were busy with hurrying passers-by. What multitudes of
unknown faces, unknown to her and unknown to each other! These people
did not speak: they only hurried on, each intent upon his own affairs,
caring nothing, apparently, for the din around them, and looking so
strange and sad in their black clothes in the pale and misty sunlight.

"You are in a trance, Sheila," he said.

She did not answer. Surely she had wandered into some magical city,
for now the houses on one side of the way suddenly ceased, and she saw
before her a great and undulating extent of green, with a border of
beautiful flowers, and with groups of trees that met the sky all along
the southern horizon. Did the green and beautiful country she had seen
shoot in thus into the heart of the town, or was there another city
far away on the other side of the trees? The place was almost as
deserted as those still valleys she had passed by in the morning.
Here, in the street, there was the roar of a passing crowd, but there
was a long and almost deserted stretch of park, with winding roads and
umbrageous trees, on which the wan sunlight fell from between loose
masses of half-golden cloud.

Then they passed Kensington Gardens, and there were more people
walking down the broad highways between the elms.

"You are getting nearly home now, Sheila," he said. "And you will be
able to come and walk in these avenues whenever you please."