He now looked on Wilkins's for the first time in his life, and he was
even more afraid of it than he had been while thinking about it in the
vestibule of the Majestic. It was not larger than the Majestic; it was
perhaps smaller; it could not show more terra-cotta, plate-glass and
sculptured cornice than the Majestic. But it had a demeanour ... and
it was in a square which had a demeanour.... In every window-sill--not
only of the hotel, but of nearly every mighty house in the
Square--there were boxes of bright blooming flowers. These he could
plainly distinguish in the October dusk, and they were a wonderful
phenomenon--say what you will about the mildness of that particular
October! A sublime tranquillity reigned over the scene. A liveried
keeper was locking the gate of the garden in the middle of the Square
as if potentates had just quitted it and rendered it for ever sacred.
And between the sacred shadowed grove and the inscrutable fronts
of the stately houses there flitted automobiles of the silent and
expensive kind, driven by chauffeurs in pale grey or dark purple, who
reclined as they steered, and who were supported on their left
sides by footmen who reclined as they contemplated the grandeur of
existence.
Edward Henry's taxi-cab in that Square seemed like a homeless cat that
had strayed into a dog-show.
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