The Sleeping Sphinx

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The road, so long that it looked narrow, had on its left the thick greenery of Regent's Park and on its right the tall iron railings around St. Katharine's Precinct of St. Katharine's Church. Just beyond, next to St Katharine's, you could see the line of trees which screened from the road a terrace of tall, stately houses looming white through the dusk.

Number 1, Gloucester Gate. He could see it now.

It was the turn of the evening: faintly blue and white, with birds bickering from the direction of the park. The heat of the day still lingered in this avenue which seemed no less rural for being in the middle of London. Donald Holden stopped in his slow walk, and gripped his hand around one of the bars of the fence. Panic? Something very like it, at least

Of all the ways in which he had pictured his home coming —and there had been many of them—he had never pictured it as anything like this.

Things were much too altered in seven years. You might have hoped they were not ruined; but at least they were altered.

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