She rose at length, slowly and with seeming reluctance, to her feet. Her companion at once sprang to her side. Ralph rose also, and faced them. Why he did so he did not know. He was still following a blind and unreasoning impulse. She paused for a moment or two and looked steadfastly in his direction, then turned and quickly walked away, and a moment later was swallowed up in the multitude. Ralph took one step forward, then turned back and sat down with a jerk. He had come to himself at last. "Well, I have played the fool with a vengeance," he muttered to himself. "I have just pulled down all I have been trying for the last two years to build up." The next moment he was unconscious of his surroundings again. Crowds of people passed and re-passed, but he saw one face only, the face that had never ceased to haunt him since the hour when, in her bright, imperious way, she commanded him to open the gate. How readily and vividly he recalled every incident of that afternoon. He felt her arms about his neck even now. He was hurrying across the downs once more in the direction of St. Goram. His heart was thrilling with a new sensation. He came to himself again after a while and sauntered slowly out of the Park. Beauty and wealth and fashion jostled him on every side, but it was a meaningless show to him. Had Ruth been with him she would have gone into ecstasies over the hats and dresses, for such creations were never seen in St. Goram, nor even dreamed of. Men have to be educated to appreciate the splendours and glories of feminine attire, and, generally speaking, the education is a slow and disappointing process. The male eye is not quick in detecting the subtleties of lace and chiffon, the values of furs and furbelows. "Women dress to please the men," somebody has remarked. That may be true in some cases. More frequently, it is to be feared, they dress to make other women envious. Ralph's education in the particular line referred to had not even commenced. He knew nothing of the philosophy of clothes. He was vaguely conscious sometimes that some people were well dressed and others ill dressed, that some women were gowned becomingly and others unbecomingly, but beyond that generalisation he never ventured. He had begun to dress well himself almost without knowing it. He instinctively avoided everything that was loud or noticeable. Nature had given him a good figure--tall, erect, and well proportioned. Moreover, he was free from the vanity which makes a man self-conscious, and he was sufficiently well educated to know what constituted a gentleman. He got back to the small hotel at which he was staying in time for an early dinner, after which he strolled into the Embankment Gardens and listened to the band. Later still, he found himself sitting on one of the seats in Trafalgar Square listening to the splash of the fountains and dreaming of home, and yet in every dream stood out the exquisite face and figure of Dorothy Hamblyn.