On a frosty winter's day, a man confronts an older man and a younger woman on a country road. Hillier's use of the three figures, his apparently realistic style of representation, and his title for the painting, invite the viewer to construct a plausible narrative for the action; he offers some visual clues but ultimately the meaning of the painting remains enigmatic and the ambiguous details of the image constitute a significant development of what Hillier, in the 1930s, called his 'very natural form of symbolism'.