n, you will see that you
gave me something to live up to when you said you needed my courage.
There's a fight going on all the time between my spirit and my body.
Sometimes, when the pain has been appalling, I have thought I would
write to you and ask you to release me from being brave. But I did not
want to seem to you a tortured thing--Sometimes, too, I have
deliberately pushed the morphia on one side and stuck it out. It was one
way of getting my own back on this bundle of nerves and sensations that
has played such havoc with me and that, as you scornfully told me, has
once or twice cheapened me to an unworthy pleasure--'like a queen going
on the streets.' I've been damned, damned, by this overlordship of the
body. Now I'm going to get rid of it, and even now I don't want to! I
know now I am dying, and there is morphia here under my hand. But I'll
be damned in pain rather than be beaten by it! I won't die a cow's
death, as the old Norsemen used to call it! I'll fight every inch of the
way.--But I wish Aunt Janet would come in and jab the needle in me,
forcibly. That would be quite honourable, wouldn't it?

* * * * *

The candle began to flicker and, turning, she saw that it was spending
its last dying flame. It was impossible to write. She lay still,
watching the glimmering dark square of the window. She could not see
another candle there. All she could see was the little phial of
tabloids. But she lay back and let the pain fasten on her. The blazing
needles that were piercing her, the blazing hammers that were battering
her, gathered in fury and for a few merciful hours she lost
consciousness.

When she wakened again the pain had completely gone and the first faint
cool light was struggling through the mists on Ben Grief. She groped
about the counterpane and found her pencil, and went on writing. This
time the letters were not so proudly neat. Many of them were shaky and
spindlelegged and she knew it.

* * * * *

The candle went out, then. Some hours have passed, and with them the
pain. A very beautiful thing has come to me;--the peace that passeth
all understanding until you've lost your body. I understand now, very
well. Our lives are just God's pathway, and we get in His way and have
to be hurt before He can get along us. I was, unconsciously, His pathway
to Louis until you came along--and you were a smoother pathway than I.
His feet have blazed