At twenty or thirty miles from Fishguard we came to some open water--an arm of the sea, I understood--the Bay of Bristol, where boats were, and tall, rain-gutted hills that looked like tumbled-down castles. Then came more open country--moorland, I suppose--with some sheep, once a flock of black ones; and then the lovely alternating hues of this rain-washed world. The water under these dark clouds took on a peculiar luster. It looked at times like burnished steel--at times like muddy lead. I felt my heart leap up as I thought of our own George Inness and what he would have done with these scenes and what the English Turner has done, though he preferred, as a rule, another key. At four-thirty one of the charming English trainmen came and asked if we would have tea in the dining-car. We would. We arose and in a few moments were entering one of those dainty little basket cars. The tables were covered with white linen and simple, pretty china and a silver tea-service. It wasn’t as if you were traveling at all. I felt as though I were stopping at the house of a friend; or as though I were in the cozy corner of some well-known and friendly inn. Tea was served. We ate toast and talked cheerfully. This whole trip--the landscape, the dining-car, this cozy tea, Miss X. and her lover, Miss E. and Barfleur--finally enveloped my emotional fancy like a dream. I realized that I was experiencing a novel situation which would not soon come again. The idea of this pretty mistress coming to England to join her lover, and so frankly admitting her history and her purpose, rather took my mind as an intellectual treat. You really don’t often get to see this sort of thing. I don’t. It’s Gallic in its flavor, to me. Barfleur, being a man of the world, took it as a matter of course--his sole idea being, I fancy, that the refinement of personality and thought involved in the situation were sufficient to permit him to tolerate it. I always judge his emotion by that one gleaming eye behind the monocle. The other does not take my attention so much. I knew from his attitude that ethics and morals and things like that had nothing to do with his selection of what he would consider interesting personal companionship. Were they interesting? Could they tell him something new? Would they amuse him? Were they nice--socially, in their clothing, in their manners, in the hundred little material refinements which make up a fashionable lady or gentleman? If so, welcome. If not, hence. And talent! Oh, yes, he had a keen eye for talent. And he loves the exceptional and will obviously do anything and everything within his power to foster it.