His tears fell almost as fast as mine did when we parted, but he is coming back soon – perhaps in a fortnight, so I will not think any more of them, but of that. I never told him of it, of course, but, when I was last so ill, I used to start out of fragments of dreams, broken from all parts of the universe, with the cry from my own lips ‘Oh, Papa, Papa!’ . . . Well! But I do trust I shall not be ill again in his absence and that it may not last longer than a fortnight . . . Just weeks ago I swooped down on my dear brother Bro in a storm of emotion which quite wore me out, hence my recent removal to Torquay; yet this detail need not be revealed in correspondence – it is safer to say a blood vessel burst during one of my coughs and I fell gravely ill, which is also true. To have stayed in London would, Dr. Chambers said, have been suicidal, so here I must remain. I hang by a thread between life and death, and can feel with each morsel my weight increase. Bro says I have grown vain.
