“I’ll tell you,” he said after a time and when the wine glasses had been refilled a number of times, “we must give a party out here some time, something extraordinary, a real one.  De Shay and Bielow” (naming another artist) “and myself must think it out.  I know three different dancers”—­and he began to enumerate their qualities.  I saw plainly that even though women played a minor part in his life, they were the fringe and embroidery to his success and power.  At one a.m. we went to our rooms, having touched upon most of the themes dear to metropolitan lovers of life and art.

The next morning was wonderful—­glittering, if windy.  The sea sparkled beyond the waste of sand.  I noted anew the richness of the furnishings, the greatness of the house.  Set down in so much sand and facing the great sea, it was wonderful.  There was no order for breakfast; we came down as we chose.  A samovar and a coffee urn were alight on the table.  Rolls, chops, anything, were brought on order.  Possibly because I was one of the first about, my host singled me out—­he was up and dressed when I came down—­and we strolled over the estate to see what we should see.

Curiously, although I had seen many country homes of pretension and even luxury, I never saw one that appealed to me more on the ground of promise and, after a fashion, of partial fulfillment.  It was so unpretentiously pretentious, so really grand in a limited and yet poetic way.  Exteriorly its placement, on a rise of ground commanding that vast sweep of sea and sand, its verandahs, so very wide—­great smooth floors of red concrete—­bordered with stone boxes for flowers and handsomely designed stone benches, its long walks and drives but newly begun, its stretch of beach, say a half mile away and possibly a mile and a half long, to be left, as he remarked, “au naturel,” driftwood, stones and all, struck me most favorably.  Only one long pier for visiting yachts was to be built, and a certain stretch of beach, not over three hundred feet, cleared for bath houses and a smooth beach.  On one spot of land, a high hummock reaching out into the sea, had already been erected a small vantage tower, open at the bottom for shade and rest, benches turning in a circle upon a concrete floor, above it, a top looking more like a small bleak lighthouse than anything else.  In this upper portion was a room reached by small spiral concrete stairs!

I could not help noting the reserve and savoir faire with which my host took all this.  He was so healthy, assured, interested and, I am glad to say, not exactly self-satisfied; at least he did not impress me in that way—­a most irritating condition.  Plainly he was building a very splendid thing.  His life was nearing its apex.  He must not only have had millions, but great taste to have undertaken, let alone accomplished, as much as was already visible here.  Pointing to a bleak waste of sand between the house and the sea—­and it looked like a huge red and yellow bird perched upon a waste of sand—­he observed, “When you come again in the spring, that will contain a garden of 40,000 roses.  The wind is nearly always off the sea here.  I want the perfume to blow over the verandahs.  I can rotate the roses so that a big percentage of them will always be in bloom.”