I know you will have been sorry to hear that I have been ill—and had to leave work, and home. The immediate cause was a severe and sudden attack of influenza which went to membranes of the head and brain, and all but resulted in brain fever. This evil was averted—but it and the possible collapse of your friend Will were at one time, and for some days, an imminent probability.
I have now been a fortnight in this quiet sea-haven, and am practically myself again. Part of my work is now too hopelessly in arrears ever to catch up. Fortunately, our friend Miss F. M. practically finished her book just before she got ill too—and there is a likelihood that There is But One Love [published in the following year under the title of The Dominion of Dreams] will come out this Spring. A few days will decide....
Your friend and Sunlover,
(in the deep sense you know I mean—for I have suffered much, but am now again fronting life gravely and with laughing eyes),
Will.
and again after his return to London:
Rutland House.
My dear Robert,
... After months of sickness, at one time at the gates of death, I am whirled back from the Iron Gates and am in the maelstrom again—fighting with mind and soul and body for that inevitable losing game which we call victory. Well, the hour waits: and for good or ill I put forth that which is in me. The Utmost for the Highest. There is that motto for all faithful failures....
I am busy of course. And so, too, our friend F. M.—with an elixir of too potent life. The flame is best: and the keener, the less obscured of smoke. So I believe: upon this I build. Cosmopolis will ere long have “The Wayfarer” of hers—Good Words “The Wells of Peace”—Harpers, something—Literature a spiritual ballad—and so forth. But her life thought is in another and stranger thing than she has done yet.[4] ... Your friend W. S. is busy too, with new and deeper and stronger work. The fugitive powers impel. I look eagerly to new work of yours: above all to what you colour with yourself. I care little for anything that is not quick with that volatile part of one which is the effluence of the spirit within. Write to me soon: by return best of all. You can help me—as I, I hope, can help you.