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.

Every time he heard the sound of the bells, the throbbing of his heart
must have nearly killed him. He used always to turn quite white--there
was no trick about it. It was imagination acting physically on the body.

His death as Matthias--the death of a strong, robust man--was different
from all his other stage deaths. He did really almost die--he imagined
death with such horrible intensity. His eyes would disappear upwards,
his face grow gray, his limbs cold.

No wonder, then, that the first time that the Wolverhampton doctor's
warning was disregarded, and Henry played "The Bells" at Bradford, his
heart could not stand the strain. Within twenty-four hours of his last
death as Matthias, he was dead.

What a heroic thin