in contact with really artistic people the more distinguished he was
becoming. Probably the latter, for the possession of that Harpignies,
a good specimen, which he had bought by accident, and subsequently by
accident discovered to have a peculiar value, had become a factor in his
life, marking him out from all his friends, who went in more for a neat
type of Royal Academy landscape, together with reproductions of young
ladies in eighteenth-century costumes seated on horseback, or in Scotch
gardens. A junior partner in a banking-house of some importance, he
lived at Wimbledon, whence he passed up and down daily in his car. To
this he owed his acquaintance with the family of Dallison. For one day,
after telling his chauffeur to meet him at the Albert Gate, he had
set out to stroll down Rotten Row, as he often did on the way home,
designing to nod to anybody that he knew. It had turned out a somewhat
barren expedition. No one of any consequence had met his eye; and it was
with a certain almost fretful longing for distraction that in Kensington
Gardens he came on an old man feeding birds out of a paper bag. The
birds having flown away on seeing him, he approached the feeder to
apologize.

"I'm afraid I frightened your birds, sir," he began.

This old man, who was dressed in smoke-grey tweeds which exhaled a
poignant scent of peat, looked at him without answering.

"I'm afraid your birds saw me coming," Mr. Purcey said again.

"In those days," said the aged stranger, "birds were afraid of men."

Mr. Purcey's shrewd grey eyes perceived at once that he had a character
to deal with.