o get free, yet
obliged to simulate content, had lighted the lamp and replenished the
fire. It had always been a comfortable room. The lamp by which John
worked had a green shade which concentrated the light upon a table
covered with that litter of papers in which there seemed so little
order, yet which Mr. Tatham knew to the last scrap as if they had been
the tidiest in the world. The long glazed book-case which filled up one
side of the room gave a dark reflection of the light and of the leaping
brightness of the fire. The curtains were drawn over the windows. If the
clerk fumed in the outer rooms, here all was studious life and quiet.
No spectator could have been otherwise than impressed by the air of
absolute self-concentration with which the eminent lawyer gave himself
up to his work. He was like his lamp, giving all the light in him to the
special subject, indifferent to everything outside.

"What is it, Simmons?" he said abruptly, without looking up.

"A lady, sir, who says she has urgent business and must see you."

"A lady--who _must_ see me." John Tatham smiled at the very ineffectual
_must_, which meant coercion and distraction to him. "I don't see how
she is going to accomplish that."

"I told her so," said the clerk.

"Well, you must tell her so again." He had scarcely lifted his head from
his work, so that it was unnecessary to return to it when the door
closed, and Mr. Tatham went on steadily as before.

It is easy to concentrate the light of the lamp when it is duly shaded
and no wind to blow it about, and it is easy to concentrate a man's
attention in the absolute quiet when nothing interrupts him; but when
there suddenly rises up a wind of talk in the room which is separated
from him only by a door, a tempest of chattering words and laughter,
shrill and bursting forth in something like shrieks, making the student
start, that is altogether a different business. The lady outside, who
evidently had multiplied herself--unless it was conceivable that the
serious Simmons had made himself her accomplice--had taken the cleverest
way of showing that she was not to be beat by any passive resistance of
busy man, though not even an audible conversation with Simmons would
have startled or disturbed his master, to whom it would have been
apparent that his faithful vassal was thus defending his own stronghold
and innermost retirement. But this was quite independent of Simmons, a
discussion in two voices, one hi