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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
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