“Oh, having a nice country-house within a short traveling distance of London or Paris, and being able to dine at the best restaurants and visit the best theaters once or twice a week; to go to Paris or Monte Carlo or Scheveningen or Ostend two or three or four, or as many times a year as they please; to wear good clothes and to be thoroughly comfortable.” “That is not a bad standard,” I said, and then I added, “And what else do they do?” “And what else should they do? Isn’t that enough?” And there you have the European standard according to Miss X. as contrasted with the American standard which is, or has been up to this time, something decidedly different, I am sure. We have not been so eager to live. Our idea has been to work. No American that I have ever known has had the idea of laying up just so much, a moderate amount, and then retiring and living. He has had quite another thought in his mind. The American--the average American--I am sure loves power, the ability to do something, far more earnestly than he loves mere living. He wants to be an officer or a director of something, a poet, anything you please for the sake of being it--not for the sake of living. He loves power, authority, to be able to say, “Go and he goeth,” or, “Come and he cometh.” The rest he will waive. Mere comfort? You can have that. But even that, according to Miss X., was not enough for her. She had told me before, and this conversation brought it out again, that her thoughts were of summer and winter resorts, exquisite creations in the way of clothing, diamonds, open balconies of restaurants commanding charming vistas, gambling tables at Monte Carlo, Aix-les-Bains, Ostend and elsewhere, to say nothing of absolutely untrammeled sex relations. English conventional women were frumps and fools. They had never learned how to live; they had never understood what the joy of freedom in sex was. Morals--they are built up on a lack of imagination and physical vigor; tenderness--well, you have to take care of yourself; duty--there isn’t any such thing. If there is, it’s one’s duty to get along and have money and be happy. CHAPTER III AT FISHGUARD While I was lying in my berth the fifth morning, I heard the room steward outside my door tell some one that he thought we reached Fishguard at one-thirty.