th that dreadful low fever that is
foolishly called the influenza, your second, if not your third, attack.
I need not remind you how I waited on you, and tended you, not merely
with every luxury of fruit, flowers, presents, books and the like that
money can procure, but with that affection, tenderness and love that,
whatever you may think, is not to be procured for money. Except for an
hour's walk in the morning, an hour's drive in the afternoon, I never
left the hotel. I got special grapes from London for you as you did not
care for those the hotel supplied; invented things to please you;
remained either with you or in the room next to yours; sat with you
every evening to quiet or amuse you.

After four or five days you recover, and I take lodgings in order to try
and finish my play. You, of course, accompany me. The morning after the
day on which we were installed I feel extremely ill.

The doctor finds I have caught the influenza from you.

There is no manservant to wait on me, not even any one to send out on a
message, or to get what the doctor orders. But you are there. I feel no
alarm. The next two days you leave me entirely alone without care,
without attendance, without anything. It was not a question of grapes,
flowers and charming gifts: it was a question of mere necessities.

And when I was left all day without anything to read, you calmly tell me
that you bought the book I wanted, and that they had promised to send it
down, a statement which I found by chance afterwards to have been
entirely untrue, from beginning to end. All the while you are, of
course, living at my expense, driving about, dining at the Grand Hotel,
and indeed only appearing in my room for money. On the Saturday night,
you having completely left me unattended and alone since the morning, I
asked you to come back after dinner, and sit with me for a little. With
irritable voice and ungracious manner you promise to do so. I wait till
11 o'clock, and you never appear.

At three in the morning, unable to sleep, and tortured with thirst, I
made my way in the dark and cold, down to the sitting-room in the hopes
of finding some water there. I found you. You fell on me with every
hideous word an intemperate mood, an undisciplined and untutored nature
could suggest. By the terrible alchemy of egotism you converted your
remorse into rage. You accused me of selfishness in expecting you to be
with me when I was ill; of standing between you and your