After that Mr. Trafford had one clear desire in his being which ruled all his other desires. He wanted a long, frank, unembarrassed and uninterrupted conversation with Marjorie. He had a very strong impression that Marjorie wanted exactly the same thing. For a week he besieged the situation in vain. After the fourth day Solomonson was only kept in Buryhamstreet by sheer will-power, exerted with a brutality that threatened to end that friendship abruptly. He went home on the sixth day in his largest car, but Trafford stayed on beyond the limits of decency to perform some incomprehensible service that he spoke of as "clearing up." "I want," he said, "to clear up." "But what _is_ there to clear up, my dear boy?" "Solomonson, you're a pampered plutocrat," said Trafford, as though everything was explained. "I don't see any sense in it at all," said Solomonson, and regarded his friend aslant with thick, black eyebrows raised. "I'm going to stay," said Trafford. And Solomonson said one of those unhappy and entirely disregarded things that ought never to be said. "There's some girl in this," said Solomonson. "Your bedroom's always waiting for you at Riplings," he said, when at last he was going off.... Trafford's conviction that Marjorie also wanted, with an almost equal eagerness, the same opportunity for speech and explanations that he desired, sustained him in a series of unjustifiable intrusions upon the seclusion of the Popes. But although the manner of Mr. and Mrs. Pope did change considerably for the better after his next visit, it was extraordinary how impossible it seemed for him and Marjorie to achieve their common end of an encounter. Always something intervened. In the first place, Mrs. Pope's disposition to optimism had got the better of her earlier discretions, and a casual glance at Daphne's face when their visitor reappeared started quite a new thread of interpretations in her mind. She had taken the opportunity of hinting at this when Mr. Pope asked over his shirt-stud that night, "What the devil that--that chauffeur chap meant by always calling in the afternoon." "Now that Will Magnet monopolizes Marjorie," she said, after a little pause and a rustle or so, "I don't see why Daffy shouldn't have a little company of her own age." Mr. Pope turned round and stared at her. "I didn't think of that," he said. "But, anyhow, I don't like the fellow." "He seems to be rather clever," said Mrs. Pope, "though he certainly talks too much. And after all it was Sir Rupert's aeroplane. _He_ was only driving it to oblige." "He'll think twice before he drives another," said Mr. Pope, wrenching off his collar....