The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams — Read

But that evening Anthony, lying in a large chair, contemplated Quentin with almost equal bewilderment.

For he had never known his friend so disturbed, so almost hysterical with--but what it was with Anthony could not understand. The window of their common sitting-room looked out westward over the houses of Shepherd's Bush, and every now and then Quentin would look at it, with such anxiety and distress that Anthony found himself expecting he knew not what to enter--a butterfly or a lion perhaps, he thought absurdly. A winged lion? Venice--Saint Mark. Perhaps Saint Mark was riding about over London on a winged lion, though why Quentin should be so worried about Saint Mark he couldn't think. The lion they had seen (if they had) wasn't winged, or hadn't seemed to be. Somewhere Anthony vaguely remembered to have seen a picture of people riding on winged lions--some Bible illustration, he thought, Daniel or the Apocalypse. He had forgotten what they were doing, but he had a general vague memory of swords and terrible faces, and a general vague idea that it all had something to do with wasting the earth.