So that he had not seen the main avenues of
London for a long time. He had been forgetting riches and luxury, and
the oriental cigarette-shops whose proprietors' names end in 'opoulos,'
and the haughtiness of the ruling classes, and the still sterner
haughtiness of their footmen. He had now abandoned Alice in Putney. And
a mysterious demon seized him and gripped him, and sought to pull him
back in the direction of the simplicity of Putney, and struggled with
him fiercely, and made him writhe and shrink before the brilliant
phenomena of London's centre, and indeed almost pitched him out of the
car and set him running as hard as legs would carry to Putney. It was
the demon which we call habit. He would have given a picture to be in
Putney, instead of swimming past Hyde Park Corner to the accompaniment
of Mr. Oxford's amiable and deferential and tactful conversation.
However, his other demon, shyness, kept him from imperiously stopping
the car.
The car stopped itself in Bond Street, in front of a building with a
wide archway, and the symbol of empire floating largely over its roof.
Placards said that admission through the archway was a shilling; but Mr.
Oxford, bearing Priam's latest picture as though it had cost fifty
thousand instead of five hundred pounds, went straight into the place
without paying, and Priam accepted his impressive invitation to follow.
Pages:
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189