1900, about 3 p.m. The scene is the western room of a suite of
offices on the fifth floor of a house in Chancery Lane, the offices
of _Fraser and Warren_, Consultant Actuaries and Accountants. There
is a long window facing west, the central part of which is open,
affording a passage out on to a parapet. Through this window, and
still better from the parapet outside, may be seen the picturesque
spires and turrets of the Law Courts, a glimpse here and there of
the mellow, red-brick, white-windowed houses of New Square, the
tree-tops of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the hint beyond a steepled
and chimneyed horizon of the wooded heights of Highgate. All this
outlook is flooded with the brilliant sunshine of June, scarcely
dimmed by the city smoke and fumes.

In the room itself there are on each of the tables vases of flowers
and a bunch of dark red roses on the top of the many pigeon-holed
bureau at which Vivien Warren is seated. The walls are mainly
covered with book-shelves well filled with consultative works on
many diverse subjects. There is another series of shelves crowded
with neat, green, tin boxes containing the papers of clients. A dark
green-and-purple portière partly conceals the entry into a washing
place which is further fitted with a gas stove for cooking and
cupboards for crockery and provisions. At the opposite end of the
room is a door which opens into a small bedroom. The fireplace in
the main room is fitted with the best and least smelly kind of gas
stove obtainable in 1900.

There are two square tables covered with piles of documents neatly
tied with green tape and ranged round the central vase of flowers; a
heavy, squat earthenware vase not easily knocked over; and there is
a second bureau with pigeon-holes and a roll top, similar to the one