e suburb.
But just as the cab reached the beginning of the Camden Road, he caught
sight of a slop-shop where old clothes smothered the entrance with their
mucid heaps and, just beyond, of three houses from whose surface the
stucco was peeling in great scabs and the damp was oozing in livid
arabesques and scrawls of verdigris. This group restored to Kentish Town
a putative disquiet, and the impression of mere dirt and noise and
exhalations of fried fish were merged in the more definite character
allotted by his prefiguration.

The Camden Road was, in contrast with what had gone before, a wide and
easy thoroughfare which let in the blue summer sky; and it was not for
some minutes that Michael began to notice what a queerness came from the
terraces that branched off on either side. The suggestion these terraces
could weave extended itself to the detached houses of the main road. In
the gaps between them long parallelograms of gardens could be seen
joining others even longer that led up to the backs of another road
behind. Sometimes it seemed that fifty gardens at once were visible,
circumscribed secretive pleasure-grounds in the amount of life they
could conceal, the life that could prosper and decay beneath their
arbors merely for that conspiracy of gloating windows. It was impossible
not to speculate upon the quality of existence in these precise
enclosures; and to this the chapels of obscure sects that the cab
occasionally passed afforded an indication. To these arid little
tabernacles the population stole out on Sunday mornings. There would be
something devilish about these reunions. Upon these pinchbeck creeds
their souls must surely starve, must slowly shrink to desiccated imps.
Anything more spiritually malevolent than those announcements chalked
upon the black notice-board of the advent of the hebdomadal messiah, the
peregrine cleric, the sacred migrant was impossible to imagine. With
what apostolic cleverness would he impose himself upon these people, and
how after the gravid midday meal of the Sabbath he would sit in those
green arbors like a horrible Chinese fum. The cabman broke in upon
Michael's fantastic depression by calling down through the trap that
they were arrived at the Nag's Head and what part of Seven Sisters Road
did he want.

Michael was disappointed by the Seven Sisters Road. It seemed to be
merely the garish mart of a moderately poor suburban population. There
was here nothing to support the di