O.W. Because an epitome is always more terrible than a generalization. We do not see life in general steadily diminishing in force and vitality, or we do not realize it; the whole bulk is too great. But when a man really sees into himself, the process of diminution that is going on becomes apparent: he meets there a problem he cannot escape—a problem to which religion, and philosophy, and history can give no certain answer, however much they may pretend. As I sit here—with a few friends left to me; friends who, however faithful, their number must needs diminish—for I shall never make a new friend in my life, though perhaps a few after I die—as I sit here and look back, I realize that I have lived the complete life necessary to the artist: I have had great success, I have had great failure. I have learned the value of each; and I know now that failure means more—always must mean more than success. Why, then, should I complain? I do not mean that a certain infirmity of the flesh, or weakness of the will would not make me prefer that this should have happened to one of my friends—to one of you—rather than to myself; but admitting that, I still recognize that I have only at last come to the complete life which every artist must experience in order to join beauty to truth. I have come to see that St. Helena is, for a world which follows Cæsar and not Christ, the greatest place on earth next to Calvary. It is more neglected: men do not fight for it, they do not go out to conquer it in weary generations of disastrous crusades, like those which did so much to destroy for Catholic Europe the true significance of Christianity. But it is there; and only when men begin to fight for it, as a thing desirable and precious to possess, only then will its spiritual significance change, and its value diminish. If I could write what I have been saying to you, if I could hope to interest others, as I seem to have interested you, I would; but the world will not listen to me—now. It is strange—I never thought it possible before—to regret that one has too much leisure: leisure which I used so to lack, when I myself was a creator of beautiful things. L.H. But you told me, in your last letter, that you were writing something? O.W. I told you that I was going to write something: I tell everybody that. It is a thing one can repeat each day, meaning to do it the next. But in my heart—that chamber of leaden echoes—I know that I never shall. It is enough that the stories have been invented, that they actually exist; that I have been able, in my own mind, to give them the form which they demand. R.R. If you won’t write them, Oscar, you might at least tell them. O.W. You have heard them all, Robbie. R.R. The others have not.