In the stillness of the night Trafford found himself thinking over
Marjorie; it was a new form of mental exercise, which was destined to
play a large part in his existence for many subsequent years. There had
come a shadow on his confidence in her. She was a glorious person; she
had a kind of fire behind her and in her--shining through her, like the
lights in a fire-opal, but----He wished she had not made him promise to
conceal their meeting and their close co-operation from her father. Why
did she do that? It would spoil his case with her father, and it could
forward things for them in no conceivable way. And from that, in some
manner too subtle to trace, he found his mind wandering to another
problem, which was destined to reappear with a slowly dwindling
importance very often in this procedure of thinking over Marjorie in the
small hours. It was the riddle--it never came to him in the daytime, but
only in those intercalary and detachedly critical periods of
thought--why exactly had she engaged herself to Magnet? Why had she? He
couldn't imagine himself, in Marjorie's position, doing anything of the
sort. Marjorie had ways of her own; she was different.... Well, anyhow,
she was splendid and loving and full of courage.... He had got no
further than this when at last he fell asleep.