It was nine o’clock--the hour of the ship’s sailing. I went forward to the prow, and watched the sailors on B deck below me cleaning up the final details of loading, bolting down the freight hatches covering the windlass and the like. All the morning I had been particularly impressed with the cloud of gulls fluttering about the ship, but now the harbor, the magnificent wall of lower New York, set like a jewel in a green ring of sea water, took my eye. When should I see it again? How soon should I be back? I had undertaken this voyage in pell-mell haste. I had not figured at all on where I was going or what I was going to do. London--yes, to gather the data for the last third of a novel; Rome--assuredly, because of all things I wished to see Rome; the Riviera, say, and Monte Carlo, because the south of France has always appealed to me; Paris, Berlin--possibly; Holland--surely. I stood there till the _Mauretania_ fronted her prow outward to the broad Atlantic. Then I went below and began unpacking, but was not there long before I was called out by Barfleur. “Come up with me,” he said. We went to the boat deck where the towering red smoke-stacks were belching forth trailing clouds of smoke. I am quite sure that Barfleur, when he originally made his authoritative command that I come to England with him, was in no way satisfied that I would. It was a somewhat light venture on his part, but here I was. And now, having “let himself in” for this, as he would have phrased it, I could see that he was intensely interested in what Europe would do to me--and possibly in what I would do to Europe. We walked up and down as the boat made her way majestically down the harbor. We parted presently but shortly he returned to say, “Come and meet Miss E. and Miss X. Miss E. is reading your last novel. She likes it.” [Illustration: “I saw Mr. G. conversing with Miss E.”] I went down, interested to meet these two, for the actress--the talented, good-looking representative of that peculiarly feminine world of art--appeals to me very much. I have always thought, since I have been able to reason about it, that the stage is almost the only ideal outlet for the artistic temperament of a talented and beautiful women. Men?--well, I don’t care so much for the men of the stage. I acknowledge the distinction of such a temperament as that of David Garrick or Edwin Booth. These were great actors and, by the same token, they were great artists--wonderful artists. But in the main the men of the stage are frail shadows of a much more real thing--the active, constructive man in other lines.