one as another matter. I mean that I feel him
to have been as happy in his death (struck down that way, as by the
gods, in a clear, glorious hour) as he had been in his fame. And, with
all the sad allowances in his rich full life, he had the best of
it--the thick of the fray, the loudest of the music, the freshest and
finest of himself. It isn't as if there had been no full achievement
and no supreme thing. It was all intense, all gallant, all exquisite
from the first, and the experience, the fruition, had something
dramatically complete in them. He has gone in time not to be old,
early enough to be so generously young and late enough to have drunk
deep of the cup. There have been--I think--for men of letters few
deaths more romantically right. Forgive me, I beg you, what may sound
cold-blooded in such words--or as if I imagined there could be
anything for you 'right' in the rupture of such an affection and the
loss of such a presence. I have in my mind in that view only the
rounded career and the consecrated work. When I think of your own
situation I fall into a mere confusion of pity and wonder, with the
sole sense of your being as brave a spirit as he was (all of whose
bravery you shared) to hold on by. Of what solutions or decisions you
see before you we shall hear in time; meanwhile please believe that I
am most affectionately with you.... More than I can say, I hope your
first prostration and bewilderment are over, and that you are feeling
your way in feeling all sorts of encompassing arms--all sorts of
outstretched hands of friendship. Don't, my dear Fanny Stevenson, be
unconscious of _mine_, and believe me more than ever faithfully yours,

"Henry James."[58]

[Footnote 58: Quoted by courtesy of Henry James of New
York, nephew of the novelist.]

With this and the many other letters came one written in pencil on a
scrap of paper, unsigned:

"Mrs. Stevenson.

"Dear Madam:--All over the world people will be sorry for the death of
Robert Louis Stevenson, but none will mourn him more than the blind
white leper at Molokai."

CHAPTER IX

THE LONELY DAYS OF WIDOWHOOD.

As the slow, empty days passed, the weight of her sorrow bore more and
more heavily upon her and she grew steadily weaker. Finally, the
doctors said the only thing was change, so, in April, 1895, she set
sail with her family for San Francisco.

On the way a stop was