“I must confess that four people make the car at any rate seem tremendously overpopulated. And to tell the truth, I do not find this encounter so amusing as you seem to do.... I shall not be sorry when we have waved good-bye to those young ladies, and resume our interrupted conversation.” Sir Richmond considered something mulish in the doctor’s averted face. “I find Miss Grammont an extremely interesting--and stimulating human being. “Evidently.” The doctor sighed, stood up and found himself delivering one of the sentences he had engendered during his solitary meditations in his room before dinner. He surprised himself by the plainness of his speech. “Let me be frank,” he said, regarding Sir Richmond squarely. “Considering the general situation of things and your position, I do not care very greatly for the part of an accessory to what may easily develop, as you know very well, into a very serious flirtation. An absurd, mischievous, irrelevant flirtation. You may not like the word. You may pretend it is a conversation, an ordinary intellectual conversation. That is not the word. Simply that is not the word. You people eye one another.... Flirtation. I give the affair its proper name. That is all. Merely that. When I think--But we will not discuss it now.... Good night.... Forgive me if I put before you, rather bluntly, my particular point of view.” Sir Richmond found himself alone. With his eyebrows raised. Section 6 After twenty-four eventful hours our two students of human motives found themselves together again by the fireplace in the Old George smoking-room. They had resumed their overnight conversation, in a state of considerable tension. “If you find the accommodation of the car insufficient,” said Sir Richmond in a tone of extreme reasonableness, and I admit it is, we can easily hire a larger car in a place like this. I would not care if you hired an omnibus, said Dr. Martineau. “I am not coming on if these young women are.” “But if you consider it scandalous--and really, Martineau, really! as one man to another, it does seem to me to be a bit pernickety of you, a broad and original thinker as you are--” “Thought is one matter. Rash, inconsiderate action quite another. And above all, if I spend another day in or near the company of Miss Belinda Seyffert I shall--I shall be extremely rude to her.” “But,” said Sir Richmond and bit his lower lip and considered. “We might drop Belinda,” he suggested turning to his friend and speaking in low, confidential tones. “She is quite a manageable person. Quite. She could--for example--be left behind with the luggage and sent on by train. I do not know if you realize how the land lies in that quarter. It needs only a word to Miss Grammont.” There was no immediate reply. For a moment he had a wild hope that his companion would agree, and then he perceived that the doctor’s silence meant only the preparation of an ultimatum.