"You'd better ride into the city with me."
"I should be pleased to oblige you, but it's not my funeral. I have my own obsequies in process. Why make myself likely to become a secondary corpse at another man's?"
"Then I'd like a few minutes' talk."
"Another time. My dear sir, why worry? why be anxious? You can't do otherwise than exactly as you may be requested."
"That means there must be a deal," said Morgan, simply. "All right."
Mavering thought, "Blanked if I don't admire him!" and said: "Not a deal—rather, I imagine, a surrender to stated terms."
"Where are you staying?" Morgan asked.
"Oh, never mind about me. I have that singular dislike just mentioned to the rôle of a secondary corpse. But let me suggest specifically that you might come out here in the course of your convenience and receive from Mrs. Mavering what we will call, perhaps, advice. My opinion is that it will be the—let us say—advice which you'll have to follow; but, of course, your own judgment, sagacity, talents for strategic combination—believe me. I have the highest admiration for them—will be the best of guides."
Morgan said, "All right," quite simply, and Mavering again thought, "Blanked if I don't admire him!" admiring him, perhaps personally, at least dramatically, out of his own fund of appreciation for things that were fit and consistent. The massive simplicity of Morgan, the primitive unscrupulousness, the bulk and unity of desire in him, the shape and size and weight of bone, all seemed to fit together. He was not problematical—at least, not divided—not, in latter-day terms, "differentiated"—within himself. "I suppose I know what Mrs. Mavering would say. She needn't bother," Morgan continued, and stooped and kissed Helen, who seemed to droop under his touch. Mavering admired him without interruption. "A pyramid, an Assyrian bas-relief, a stately savage unsophisticated by altruism and the Ten Commandments. I'd give something to know what he is going to do. What can he do?" He thought he would take any reasonable odds that Helen loved this one rather than the problematical anchorite, and would not give him up. In that case what would Rachel do? The anchorite might be gone on his disembodied adventure by this time, neither capable of nor interested in doing anything mundane. But when Morgan was gone, and Helen, looking up suddenly, asked, "Have you seen Gard?" the progress of his speculation turned with abrupt angle.