For an engaged lover Ralph had been singularly remiss. He had called once since his unemotional declaration of love. To do him justice he had skipped the tender demonstrations which usually accompany even the most formal engagements and had got down to the question of settlement in the shortest space of time. This was as Moya could wish, for she also was embarrassed at the thought that a human being might possibly approach--suffering in comparison--the extravagance, wordless and intangible as it was, of her shadowy friends. It is a remarkable circumstance that romance in concrete form did not come to Moya, until the very week she engaged herself to marry Sir Ralph Sapson. It came in a curious way. She had driven to Leicester Square to see an exhibition of pictures. It was one of those collections which dawn upon London, bringing in its wake a name which has never been heard before, save in a very select circle and is never heard again outside of that circle; an orbit which swings beyond the ken of ordinary mortals. She went into the gallery and found it a veritable desert. Save for a young man and a small, pinched and preoccupied girl, wearing a large pendant in which was inserted the photograph of her uninteresting fiancé, the place was empty. The girl with the pendant carried her excuse in her hand, in the shape of a bunch of catalogues. There was less excuse for the young man for he was healthy in appearance and it was not raining. Moya began a conscientious inspection of the pictures, chiefly remarkable for their colouring and for the atmosphere which the artist had managed to secure. Indeed, the pictures were all atmosphere. The girl made a slow progress along the wall, comparing each framed atrocity with her catalogue and striving to sense, dimly, something of the artist’s honourable intentions. She looked around once to discover what effect the pictures had upon her fellow sightseer. He was standing before a long panel representing, if the catalogue had been rightly compiled, “A Blue Wind on a Green Hill.” His face bore an expression of the deepest gloom, his hat was tilted to the back of his head and his hands were thrust deeply into his trousers pockets. The longer he looked at the “Blue Wind on the Green Hill” the more morose and unhappy did he appear. This then was the attitude which the new colourist school demanded, one of fierce but approving antagonism if the paradox be permitted. She moved up till she was almost by his side, never thinking that in the presence of the girl with the programmes and the photographic miniature, he would dare address her. Yet he did. “What do you think of that one?” he asked without turning his head.