During those last weeks in London, after Fanny's death, I was not conscious of this collapse; and my first week in Dorking had a curiously stimulating effect upon me. Indeed, I fancy that week was the saving of me. But at the end of it, after one long day's writing, I took to my bed with influenza, and remained there for some time, dallying also with bronchitis, incipient pneumonia, gastritis, and a diphtheritic throat. Six weeks passed before I left my bedroom, but during only one of those weeks did I fail to produce my weekly contribution to the _Advocate_. If the quality of those contributions in any way reflected my low and febrile condition, Arncliffe mercifully refrained from drawing my attention to it. At the end of the six weeks I sat at an open window, amused by the ghostly refinement of my hands, and grateful to Providence for sunshine and clean air. The doctor was a cheery soul, toward whom I felt most strongly drawn, because he was the only man I ever met in England who smoked my particular brand of Virginia plug tobacco. I had suffered from the lack of it since leaving Australia, but this good doctor told me how to get it in England, from an agent in Yorkshire; and I was deeply grateful to him for the information. He also told me, as I sat at the open window, that he did not think much of my stewardship of my own body. 'Let me tell you, Mr. Freydon, you have been sailing several points closer to the wind than a man has any right to sail. If you treated a child so, or a servant, aye, or a dumb beast, some preventive society would be at you for cruelty and neglect. They'd call me for the prosecution, and by gad, sir, my evidence would send you to Portland or Dartmoor--fine healthy places, both of 'em, by the way! But people seem to think they're licensed to treat their own bodies with any amount of cruelty and neglect. A grave mistake; a grave mistake! In the ideal state, sir, Citizen Jones will no more be allowed to maltreat and injure the health of Citizen Jones than he will be allowed to break the head or poison the food of Citizen Smith. Why should he? Each is of the same value in the eyes of the state; and, we may suppose, in the eyes of his Maker.' The good man blew his nose, and endeavoured to introduce extreme severity into his kindly and indomitably cheerful expression.