The lunch hour in the office was only partly spent by Denham in the consumption of food.

Whether fine or wet, he passed most of it pacing the gravel paths in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

The children got to know his figure, and the sparrows expected their daily scattering of bread-crumbs.

No doubt, since he often gave a copper and almost always a handful of bread, he was not as blind to his surroundings as he thought himself.
He thought that these winter days were spent in long hours before white papers radiant in electric light; and in short passages through fog-dimmed streets.

When he came back to his work after lunch he carried in his head a picture of the Strand, scattered with omnibuses, and of the purple shapes of leaves pressed flat upon the gravel, as if his eyes had always been bent upon the ground.