Nearly a month dragged along before she was able to see me. As I have explained, her beauty was not dependent upon evanescent charms of contour and coloring, but was securely founded in the structure of her head and face and body. So, I saw lying weakly in the bed an emaciated but lovely Edna. Instantly, on sight of her, there came flooding back to me the memory of the birth of Margot, our first child--how Edna had looked when they let me go into the humble, almost squalid little bedroom in the flat of which we were so vain. She was looking exactly so in this bed of state, in this magnificent room with the evidences of wealth and rank and fashion on every side. She smiled faintly; one of the slim weak hands lying upon the cream-white silk coverlet moved. I bent and kissed it. “Thank you for being here,” she murmured, tears in her eyes. Her lips could scarcely utter the words. “You must not speak, your ladyship,” warned the nurse. To flatter Americans and to give themselves the comfortable feeling of gratified snobbishness English servants address us--or rather our women--as if we had titles. “You are to get well rapidly now,” I said. “You’ll stay until I can talk to you?” “Yes,” I said--what else could I say? They motioned me away. I had committed myself to several weeks more of that futile monotony--and I no longer had the restraint of the sense that she might die at any moment. Even had I been willing to break my promise I could not have done so; for she would have me in every morning and every afternoon to look at me, and they told me that if I were not there to reassure her, it would undoubtedly cause a change for the worse. I stayed on and wrote to Mary Kirkwood--all the time with the fear that my letters were not reaching her, but also with the unshakable conviction that she was mine. You smile at this as proof of my colossal vanity. Well, your smile convicts you of never having loved. The essence of love is congeniality. Appetite is the essence of passion--which, therefore, has no sense of or especial desire for mutuality. Passion is as common as any other physical appetite. Love is as rare as are souls generous enough to experience or to inspire it. The essence of love is congeniality--and I _knew_ there was a sympathy and understanding between me and Mary Kirkwood that made us lovers for all time.