me and comment on the power of love. I agreed with her in that, knowing hers had saved me even before the drug began to act. It was for her hand I had groped in the darkest hour of all. Even now I remember her passionate avowal that she would not let me die, my more weakly passionate response that I could not leave her lonely in the world. Now we said rude things to each other, as sisters will, with an intense sense of happiness and absence of emotion. I criticised Tommy's handwriting, and she retorted that at least she saw it regularly. Whilst as for Dennis. …
But there was no agony there now to be assuaged. My boy was on his way home and the words he had written, the cable that he had sent when he heard of my illness, lay near my heart, too sacred to show her. I let her think I had not heard from him. Closer even than a sister lies the tie between son and mother. Not perhaps between her and her rough Tommy, her fair Violet, but between me and my Dennis, my wild erratic genius, who could nevertheless pen me those words … who could send me the sweetest love letter that has ever been written.
But this has nothing to do with me and Dr. Peter Kennedy, and the curious position between us. For a long time after I began to get well it seemed we were like two wary wrestlers, watching for a hold. Only that sometimes he seemed to drop all reserves,
