He felt profoundly discouraged and pessimistic.  All his energy had left him.  London had become hard, hostile, cruel, impossible.  He longed for Leek with a great longing.

Tea

An hour later, having at the kind suggestion of the cabman deposited Leek’s goods at the cloak-room of South Kensington Station, he was wandering on foot out of old London into the central ring of new London, where people never do anything except take the air in parks, lounge in club-windows, roll to and fro in peculiar vehicles that have ventured out without horses and are making the best of it, buy flowers and Egyptian cigarettes, look at pictures, and eat and drink.  Nearly all the buildings were higher than they used to be, and the street wider; and at intervals of a hundred yards or so cranes that rent the clouds and defied the law of gravity were continually swinging bricks and marble into the upper layers of the air.  Violets were on sale at every corner, and the atmosphere was impregnated with an intoxicating perfume of methylated spirits.  Presently he arrived at an immense arched facade bearing principally the legend ‘Tea,’ and he saw within hundreds of persons sipping tea; and next to that was another arched facade bearing principally the word ‘Tea,’ and he saw within more hundreds sipping tea; and then another; and then another; and then suddenly he came to an open circular place that seemed vaguely familiar.

“By Jove!” he said.  “This is Piccadilly Circus!”

And just at that moment, over a narrow doorway, he perceived the image of a green tree, and the words, ‘The Elm Tree.’  It was the entrance to the Elm Tree Tea Rooms, so well spoken of in the Telegraph.  In certain ways he was a man of advanced and humane ideas, and the thought of delicately nurtured needy gentlewomen bravely battling with the world instead of starving as they used to starve in the past, appealed to his chivalry.  He determined to assist them by taking tea in the advertised drawing-room.  Gathering together his courage, he penetrated into a corridor lighted by pink electricity, and then up pink stairs.  A pink door stopped him at last.  It might have hid mysterious and questionable things, but it said laconically ‘Push,’ and he courageously pushed...  He was in a kind of boudoir thickly populated with tables and chairs.  The swift transmigration from the blatant street to a drawing-room had a startling effect on him:  it caused him to whip off his hat as though his hat had been red hot.  Except for two tall elegant creatures who stood together at the other end of the boudoir, the chairs and tables had the place to themselves.  He was about to stammer an excuse and fly, when one of the gentlewomen turned her eye on him for a moment, and so he sat down.  The gentlewomen then resumed their conversation.  He glanced cautiously about him.  Elm-trees, firmly rooted in a border of Indian matting, grew round all the walls in exotic profusion, and their topmost branches splashed over on to the ceiling.  A card on the trunk of a tree, announcing curtly, “Dogs not allowed,” seemed to enhearten him.  After a pause one of the gentlewomen swam haughtily towards him and looked him between the eyes.  She spoke no word, but her firm, austere glance said: