Little unimportant scenes, trivial episodes, grew in the spectral garden of memory: the first time he ever saw Marion Page, when, aged five, she was attempting to get into the fountain, pursued by a shrieking nurse; and a certain flight across the grass he had indulged in with Leila Mortimer, then Leila Egerton, aged six, in hot pursuit, because she found that it bored him horribly to be kissed, and she was bound to do it.

He had a fight once, over by that gnarled, old, silver poplar-tree, with Kemp Ferrall--he could not remember what about, only that they ended by unanimously assaulting their nurses and were dragged howling homeward.
He turned, looking across to where the gray towers of the University once stood.

There had been an old stone church there, too; and, south of that, old, old houses with hip-roofs and dormers where now the high white cliffs of modern architecture rose, riddled with tiny windows, every vane glittering in the sun.

South, the old houses still remained, now degraded to sordid uses.

North, the square, red-brick mansions, with their white pillars and steps, still faced the sunset--the last practically unbroken rank of the old regime, the last of the old guard, standing fast and still confronting, still resisting the Inevitable looming in limestone and granite, story piled on story, aloft in the kindling, southern sky.
A cab, driven smartly, passed through the park, the horses' feet slapping the asphalt till the echoes rattled back from the marble arch.
He followed it idly with his eyes up Fifth Avenue; saw it suddenly halt in the middle of the street; saw a woman spring out, stand for a moment talking to her companion, then turn and look toward the square.
She stood so long, and she was so far away, that he presently grew tired of watching her.