I entertained you, of course, I had no option in the matter; but elsewhere, and not in my own home.  The next day, Monday, your companion returned to the duties[49] of his profession, and you stayed with me.  Bored with Worthing, and still more, I have no doubt, with my fruitless efforts to concentrate my attention on my play, the only thing that really interested me at the moment, you insist on being taken to the Grand Hotel at Brighton.

The night we arrive you fall ill with that dreadful low fever that is foolishly called the influenza, your second, if not your third, attack.  I need not remind you how I waited on you, and tended you, not merely with every luxury of fruit, flowers, presents, books and the like that money can procure, but with that affection, tenderness and love that, whatever you may think, is not to be procured for money.  Except for an hour’s walk in the morning, an hour’s drive in the afternoon, I never left the hotel.  I got special grapes from London for you as you did not care for those the hotel supplied; invented things to please you; remained either with you or in the room next to yours; sat with you every evening to quiet or amuse you.

After four or five days you recover, and I take lodgings in order to try and finish my play.  You, of course, accompany me.  The morning after the day on which we were installed I feel extremely ill.

The doctor finds I have caught the influenza from you.

There is no manservant to wait on me, not even any one to send out on a message, or to get what the doctor orders.  But you are there.  I feel no alarm.  The next two days you leave me entirely alone without care, without attendance, without anything.  It was not a question of grapes, flowers and charming gifts:  it was a question of mere necessities.

And when I was left all day without anything to read, you calmly tell me that you bought the book I wanted, and that they had promised to send it down, a statement which I found by chance afterwards to have been entirely untrue, from beginning to end.  All the while you are, of course, living at my expense, driving about, dining at the Grand Hotel, and indeed only appearing in my room for money.  On the Saturday night, you having completely left me unattended and alone since the morning, I asked you to come back after dinner, and sit with me for a little.  With irritable voice and ungracious manner you promise to do so.  I wait till 11 o’clock, and you never appear.

At three in the morning, unable to sleep, and tortured with thirst, I made my way in the dark and cold, down to the sitting-room in the hopes of finding some water there.  I found you.  You fell on me with every hideous word an intemperate mood, an undisciplined and untutored nature could suggest.  By the terrible alchemy of egotism you converted your remorse into rage.  You accused me of selfishness in expecting you to be with me when I was ill; of standing between you and your amusements; of trying to deprive you of your pleasures.