"Rested! I should think so. I have plenty of time to rest. They tell me I shall be here eight weeks. Of course I sha'n't, but still--It was that rug in front of the door. I tripped over it. A commercial traveler picked me up--a kind fellow, but d--n him, he wouldn't leave me afterwards--wanted to talk to me all night." I remembered his having said this, when I was told by his servant, Walter Collinson, that on the night of his death at Bradford, he stumbled over the rug when he walked into the hotel corridor. We fell to talking about work. He said he hoped that I had a good manager ... agreed very heartily with me about Frohman, saying he was always so fair--more than fair. "What a wonderful life you've had, haven't you?" I exclaimed, thinking of it all in a flash. "Oh, yes," he said quietly ... "a wonderful life--of work." "And there's nothing better, after all, is there?" "Nothing." "What have you got out of it all.... You and I are 'getting on,' as they say. Do you ever think, as I do sometimes, what you have got out of life?" "What have I got out of it?" said Henry, stroking his chin and smiling slightly. "Let me see.... Well, a good cigar, a good glass of wine--good friends." Here he kissed my hand with courtesy. Always he was so courteous; always his actions, like this little one of kissing my hand, were so beautifully timed. They came just before the spoken words, and gave them peculiar value. "That's not a bad summing-up of it all," I said. "And the end.... How would you like that to come?" "How would I like that to come?" He repeated my question lightly yet meditatively too. Then he was silent for some thirty seconds before he snapped his fingers--the action again before the words. "Like that!" I thought of the definition of inspiration--"A calculation rapidly made." Perhaps he had never thought of the manner of his death before. Now he had an inspiration as to how it would come. We were silent a long time, I thinking how like some splendid Doge of Venice he looked, sitting up in bed, his beautiful mobile hand stroking his chin. I agreed, when I could speak, that to be snuffed out like a candle would save a lot of trouble. After Henry Irving's sudden death in October of the same year, some of his friends protested against the statement that it was the kind of death that he desired--that they knew, on the contrary, that he thought sudden death inexpressibly sad. I can only say what he told me. I stayed with him about three hours at Wolverhampton. Before I left I went back to see the doctor again--a very nice man by the way, and clever. He told me that Henry ought never to play "The Bells" again, even if he acted again, which he said ought not to be. It was clever of the doctor to see what a terrible emotional strain "The Bells" put upon Henry--how he never could play the part of Matthias with ease as he could Louis XI., for example.