e left a capital of Five Thousand pounds at
their disposal.

So in 1905 David with Three Thousand pounds purchased an annuity of
L210 a year for Vivien Warren. That investment would save Vivie from
becoming at any time penniless and dependent, and consequently would
subserve the same purpose for her cousin and agent, David V.
Williams.

Going to the C. and C. Bank, Temple Bar branch, to take stock of
Vivie's affairs, he found a Thousand pounds had been paid in to her
current account. Ascertaining the name of the payee to be L.M.
Praed, he hurried off at the first opportunity to Praed's studio.
Praed was entertaining a large party of young men and women to tea
and the exhibition of some wild futurist drawings and a few rather
striking designs for stage scenery and book covers. David had
perforce to keep his questions bottled up and take part in the
rather vapid conversation that was going on between young men with
_glabre_ faces and high-pitched voices and women with rather wild
eyes.

[It struck David about this time that women were getting a little
out of hand, strained, over-inclined to laugh mirthless laughter,
greedy for sensuality, sensation, sincerity, sweetmeats. Something.
Even if they satisfied some fleeting passion or jealousy by
marrying, they soon wanted to be de-married, separated, divorced, to
don male costume, to go on the amateur stage and act Salome parts on
Sunday afternoons that most ladies of the real Stage had refused;
while the men that went about with them in these troops from
restaurant to restaurant, studio to studio, music hall to cafe
chantant, Brighton to Monte Carlo, Sandown to Goodwood, were shifty,
too well-dressed, too near neutrality in sex, without defined
professions, known by nicknames only, spend-thrifts, spongers,
bankrupts, and collectors of needless bric-a-brac.]

However this mob at last quitted Praddy's premises and he and David
were left alone.

Praed yawned, and almost intentionally knocked over an easel with a
semi-obscene drawing on it of a Sphynx with swelling breasts
embracing a lean young man against his will.

_David_: "Praddy! why do you tolerate such people and why prostitute
your studio to such unwholesome art?"

_Praed_: "My dear David! This is _indeed_ Satan rebuking sin. Why
there are three designs here--one I've just knocked over--beastly,
wasn't it?--that _you _ left with me when you went off at a tangent
to South Africa.... Really, we ought to have _s