"My dear Nash! the idea! Nothing can be further from my wish than to be insolent to you; as I'll show you before I've done. Where can we go where we can be quiet, and have a little chat together? And afterwards if you'll take me to 37, Ocean Villas, and offer me a little lunch, and give me an opportunity of renewing my acquaintance with your charming wife, I think you'll find that we are on better terms than you seem to suppose. Where are you going?"
Mr. Nash was striding out of the station.
"To the golf-links; you say you want to go somewhere where we can be quiet; you'll have the quietude you want there."
"Thank you; I don't think we need go quite so far as the golf-links, really; nor is that exactly the sort of solitude I was thinking of. You come with me; I'll be conductor." He opened the door of a fly which was by the kerb, and stood with the handle in his hand. "Step in."
The two men looked at each other, as if each was measuring the other's strength. Then Mr. Nash said--
"Where do you think you're going?"
Mr. Morgan spoke to the driver.
"Take us to the east end of the promenade, right to the extreme end." Then he turned to Nash. "We shall have all the quietude we want there. After you."
Nash hesitated, then entered the fly; Morgan followed; the fly drove off. As it rumbled along Mr. Morgan beguiled the way by spirited attempts at conversation; but he had all the talking to himself; not once did his companion open his lips. Mr. Nash sat with unbending back, stiff neck, grim face, looking straight in front of him; Mr. Morgan might not have been in the same vehicle for all the notice he took of him. Under the circumstances his unruffled affability did the latter gentleman credit. The vehicle set them down not only at the extreme end of the promenade, but beyond it. When the fly had gone Mr. Morgan called his companion's attention to their surroundings.
"You see! where could we have more privacy, even on the golf-links? Not a creature within many yards of us. We can sit on the beam of this groyne--could it be at a more convenient height?--and talk at our leisure."