I knew the sort of
vase that I should find at Henry's hotel.
I remembered, on my way to the doctor's--for I had decided to see the
doctor first--that in 1892 when my dear mother died, and I did not act
for a few nights, when I came back I found my room at the Lyceum filled
with daffodils. "To make it look like sunshine," Henry said.
The doctor talked to me quite frankly.
"His heart is dangerously weak," he said.
"Have you told him?" I asked.
"I had to, because the heart being in that condition he must be
careful."
"Did he understand _really_?"
"Oh, yes. He said he quite understood."
Yet a few minutes later when I saw Henry, and begged him to remember
what the doctor had said about his heart, he exclaimed: "Fiddle! It's
not my heart at all! It's my _breath_!" (Oh the ignorance of great men
about themselves!)
"I also told him," the Wolverhampton doctor went on, "that he must not
work so hard in future."
I said: "He will, though,--and he's stronger than any one."
Then I went round to the hotel.
I found him sitting up in bed, drinking his coffee.
He looked like some beautiful gray tree that I have seen in Savannah.
His old dressing-gown hung about his frail yet majestic figure like some
mysterious gray drapery.
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