At certain hours the sound of bells is heard and the low rhythm of the organ throbbing through the aisles.

Then lines of quietly dressed worshippers stroll along the bordered walks, the children's hands fast in their mothers' the arched vestibule-door closing upon them.
Most of these oases, like Trinity, St.Paul's, and St.Mark's, differ but little--the same low-pitched church, the same slender spire, the same stretch of green with its scattered gravestones.

And, outside, the same old demon of hurry, defied and hurled back by a lifted hand armed with the cross.
Of these three breathing-spaces, St.Mark's is, perhaps, a little greener in the early spring, less dusty in the summer heat, less bare and uninviting in the winter snow.

It is more restful, too, than the others, a place in which to sit and muse--even to read.

Out from its shade and sunshine run queer side streets, with still queerer houses, rising two stories and an attic, each with a dormer and huge chimney.
Dried-up old aristocrats, these, living on the smallest of pensions, taking toll of notaries public, shyster lawyers, peddlers of steel pens, die-cutters, and dismal real-estate agents in dismal offices boasting a desk, two chairs, and a map.
Stephen's course lay in the direction of one of these relics of better days--a wide-eyed house with a pieced-out roof, flattened like an old woman's wig over a sloping forehead, the eyebrows of eaves shading two blinking windows.