a spectacle absolutely tragic—­he did not know why.  The few wayfarers were obviously prim and smug.  No joy, no elegance, anywhere!  Only, at intervals, a feeling that mysterious and repulsive wealth was hiding itself like an ogre in the eternal twilight of fastnesses beyond the stuccoed walls and the grimy curtains....  The city worked six days in order to be precisely this on the seventh.  Truly it was very similar to the Five Towns, and in essentials not a bit better.—­A sociological discovery which startled him!  He wanted to destroy Redcliffe Gardens, and to design it afresh and rebuild it under the inspiration of St. Mark’s and of the principles of hygiene as taught for the Final Examination.  He had grandiose ideas for a new design.  As for Redcliffe Square, he could do marvels with its spaces.

He arrived too soon at Earl’s Court Station, having forgotten that the Underground Railway had a treaty with the Church of England and all the Nonconformist churches not to run trains while the city, represented by possibly two per cent of its numbers, was at divine worship.  He walked to and fro along the platforms in the vast echoing cavern peopled with wandering lost souls, and at last a train came in from the void, and it had the air of a miracle, because nobody had believed that any train ever would come in.  And at last the Turnham Green train came in, and George got into a smoking compartment, and Mr. Enwright was in the compartment.

Mr. Enwright also was going to the Orgreave luncheon.  He was in what the office called ‘one of his moods.’  The other occupants of the compartment had a stiff and self-conscious air:  some apparently were proud of being abroad on Sunday morning; some apparently were ashamed.  Mr. Enwright’s demeanour was as free and natural as that of a child.  His lined and drawn face showed worry and self-absorption in the frankest manner.  He began at once to explain how badly he had slept; indeed he asserted that he had not slept at all; and he complained with extreme acerbity of the renewal of his catarrh.  ‘Constant secretion.  Constant secretion,’ was the phrase he used to describe the chief symptom.  Then by a forced transition he turned to the profession of architecture, and restated his celebrated theory that it was the Cinderella of professions.  The firm had quite recently obtained a very important job in a manufacturing quarter of London, without having to compete for it; but Mr. Enwright’s great leading ideas never fluctuated with the fluctuation of facts.  If the multiplicity of his lucrative jobs had been such as to compel him to run round from one to another on a piebald pony in the style of Sir Hugh Corver, his view of the profession would not have altered.  He spoke with terrible sarcasm apropos of a rumour current in architectural circles that a provincial city intended soon to invite competitive designs for a building of realty enormous proportions, and took oath that in no case should his firm, enter for the competition.  In short, his condition was markedly pessimistic.