“It isn’t your stupid view,” he said, “it is my original stupid view. You see, I can’t paint really. I know not the slightest thing about art, I have never had an artistic education or served under any master. I am a genius. These works are works of a genius. The frames cost a lot of money and the amount of paint I have used is prodigious. There is everything there,” he waved his hand to the covered walls, “except the know-how.” She murmured a conventional expression of sympathy, but he did not invite sympathy, he invited condemnation and seemed to find a comfort in his own misfortune and was obviously all the happier, that he had reached a decision on his own merits. They walked out of the gallery together and Moya wondered at herself. That she had in so brief a space of time entered into the aspirations and disappointments of a perfect stranger so that she felt something of his chagrin was truly amazing. “I know you,” he said, breaking off in the midst of a sardonic dissertation on art, “you are Lady Moya Melton or Pelton.” “Felton,” she suggested, amused. “Oh, yes, Felton,” he nodded. “I saw your portrait in the academy, a very bad portrait too.” “People thought it was rather good,” she demurred. “Idealised, but Lord, what do I know about art? This char-a-banc de luxe is yours, I presume,” he pointed to the big limousine. “It does happen to be mine,” she said; “my father gave it to me on my twenty-first birthday.” He inspected it critically. “I wonder if I know as much about motor-cars as I know about painting,” he said. “I used to think I knew something about both, but here, at any rate, is something real, it is a very nice car.” He opened the door for her and she offered her hand. “I am so sorry about the pictures,” she said. “Don’t worry,” he replied cheerfully. She thought for a moment. “Can I drop you anywhere?” He fingered his unshaven chin. “If you know of a nice deep pond where a man may drown himself without interference I should be obliged,” he said gravely, then, seeing the look of alarm in her eyes he laughed. “You probably don’t know my name,” he said. As a matter of fact she did not and had been trying throughout the interview to take a surreptitious look at the catalogue. She knew it was something like Brixel. “Fonso Blaxton--” he said shortly. “Fonso stands for Alphonso, a perfectly rotten name, isn’t it? It would be quite all right for an artist. If there’s any need to send flowers, my address is Oxford Chambers.” He shook hands abruptly, handed her into the car and closed the door. He waited only the briefest spell and had lifted his hat and vanished before the car had started.