And he already felt the approach of a shadow menacing the glory of his sunlight--already stood alert and fixedly observant of a young man who had painted something disquieting into an unfinished canvas.
That man and the young girl whom he had painted to the astonishment and inward disturbance of Jose Querida, were having no easy time in that new world which they had created for themselves.
Embarked upon an enterprise in the management of which they were neither in accord nor ever seemed likely to be, they had, so far, weathered the storms of misunderstandings and the stress of prejudice.

Blindly confident in Love, they were certain, so far, that it was Love itself that they worshipped no matter what rites and ceremonies each one observed in its adoration.

Yet each was always attempting to convert the other to the true faith; and there were days of trouble and of tears and of telephones.
Neville presented a frightfully complex problem to Valerie West.
His even-tempered indifference to others--an indifference which had always characterised him--had left only a wider and deeper void now filling with his passion for her.
They were passing through a maze of cross-purposes; his ardent and exacting intolerance of any creed and opinion save his own was ever forcing her toward a more formal and literal appreciation of what he was determined must become a genuine and formal engagement--which attitude on his part naturally produced clash after clash between them.
That he entertained so confidently the conviction of her ultimate surrender to convention, at moments vexed her to the verge of anger.

At times, too, his disposition to interfere with her liberty tried her patience.

Again and again she explained to him the unalterable fundamentals of their pact.