No, don't read it." He took it from her and laid it on his dressing-table.

"My dear love, it has very bad news in it." "There _has_ been something, then ?" "Yes.

I have been worried about my health for some time.

This letter tells me the worst is true.

Well, my dear, we did not enter matrimony with the idea that either of us was immortal." But that was his last effort to be superior to the crisis, to pretend that the bitterness of death was any less to him than to any other human creature, to conceal that he needed help, all the help that he could get.
And Adelaide gave him help.