Three-quarters of an hour later Henry might have been seen—in fact, was seen by a number of disinterested¹ wayfarers—to enter a magnificent new block of offices and flats in Charing² Cross Road. Love in Babylon was firmly gripped under his right arm. Partly this strange burden and partly the brilliant aspect of the building made him feel self-conscious and humble⁴ and rather unlike his usual calm self. For, although Henry was accustomed to offices, he was not accustomed to magnificent offices. There are offices in Lincoln's Inn Fields, offices of extreme wealth, which, were they common lodging-houses, would be instantly condemned⁵ by the County Council. Powells was such a one—and Sir George had a reputed income of twenty thousand a year. At Powells the old Dickensian tradition was kept vigorously alive by every possible means. Dirt and gloom were omnipresent. Cleanliness and ample daylight would have been deemed unbusinesslike, as revolutionary and dangerous as a typewriter. One day, in winter, Sir George had taken cold, and he had attributed his misfortune, in language which he immediately regretted, to the fact that 'that d——d woman had cleaned the windows'—probably with a damp cloth. 'That d——d woman' was the caretaker, a grey-haired person usually dressed in sackcloth, who washed herself, incidentally, while washing the stairs. At Powells, nothing but the stairs was ever put to the indignity⁶ of a bath.