“But they’re so.” “I don’t care. Why shouldn’t I be hard? Why shouldn’t I love to live and be loved? Look at my life. See what I’ve had.” “You like me, in a way?” I suggested. “I admire your intellect.” “Quite so. And others receive the gifts of your personality.” “I can’t help it. I can’t be mean to the man I’m with. He’s good to me. I won’t. I’d be sinning against the only conscience I have.” “Then you have a conscience?” “Oh, you go to the devil!” But we didn’t separate by any means. They were blowing a bugle for lunch when we came back, and down we went. Barfleur was already at table. The orchestra was playing Auld Lang Syne, Home Sweet Home, Dixie and the Suwannee River. It even played one of those delicious American rags which I love so much--the Oceana Roll. I felt a little lump in my throat at Auld Lang Syne and Dixie, and together Miss X. and I hummed the Oceana Roll as it was played. One of the girl passengers came about with a plate to obtain money for the members of the orchestra, and half-crowns were universally deposited. Then I started to eat my dessert; but Barfleur, who had hurried off, came back to interfere. “Come, come!” (He was always most emphatic.) “You’re missing it all. We’re landing.” I thought we were leaving at once. The eye behind the monocle was premonitory of some great loss to me. I hurried on deck--to thank his artistic and managerial instinct instantly I arrived there. Before me was Fishguard and the Welsh coast, and to my dying day I shall never forget it. Imagine, if you please, a land-locked harbor, as green as grass in this semi-cloudy, semi-gold-bathed afternoon, with a half-moon of granite scarp rising sheer and clear from the green waters to the low gray clouds overhead. On its top I could see fields laid out in pretty squares or oblongs, and at the bottom of what to me appeared to be the east end of the semi-circle, was a bit of gray scruff, which was the village no doubt. On the green water were several other boats--steamers, much smaller, with red stacks, black sides, white rails and funnels--bearing a family resemblance to the one we were on. There was a long pier extending out into the water from what I took to be the village and something farther inland that looked like a low shed. This black hotel of a ship, so vast, so graceful, now rocking gently in the enameled bay, was surrounded this hour by wheeling, squeaking gulls. I always like the squeak of a gull; it reminds me of a rusty car wheel, and, somehow, it accords with a lone, rocky coast. Here they were, their little feet coral red, their beaks jade gray, their bodies snowy white or sober gray, wheeling and crying--“my heart remembers how.” I looked at them and that old intense sensation of joy came back--the wish to fly, the wish to be young, the wish to be happy, the wish to be loved.