And then one thing and another brought the thought into my mind, so that I had to face it and tell people how I felt about it.  There were neighbors, wanting to know when I would be about my work again.  That it was that first made me understand that others did not feel as I was feeling.

“They’re thinking I’ll be going back to work again,” I told John’s mother.  “I canna’!”

She felt as I did.  We could not see, either one of us, in our grief, how anyone could think that I could begin again where I had left off.

“I canna’!  I will not try!” I told her, again and again.  “How can I tak up again with that old mummery?  How can I laugh when my heart is breaking, and make others smile when the tears are in my eyes?”

And she thought as I did, that I could not, and that no one should be asking me.  The war had taken much of what I had earned, in one way or another.  I was not so rich as I had been, but there was enough.  There was no need for me to go back to work, so far as our living was concerned.  And so it seemed to be settled between us.  Planning we left for the future.  It was no time for us to be making plans.  It mattered little enough to us what might be in store for us.  We could take things as they might come.

So we bided quiet in our home, and talked of John.  And from every part of the earth and from people in all walks and conditions of life there began to pour in upon us letters and telegrams of sympathy and sorrow.  I think there were four thousand kindly folk who remembered us in our sorrow, and let us know that they could think of us in spite of all the other care and trouble that filled the world in those days.  Many celebrated names were signed to those letters and telegrams, and there were many, too, from simple folk whose very names I did not know, who told me that I had given them cheer and courage from the stage, and so they felt that they were friends of mine, and must let me know that they were sorry for the blow that had befallen me.

Then it came out that I meant to leave the stage.  They sent word from London, at last, to ask when they might look for me to be back at the Shaftesbury Theatre.  And when they found what it was in my mind to do all my friends began to plead with me and argue with me.  They said it was my duty to myself to go back.

“You’re too young a man to retire, Harry,” they said.  “What would you do?  How could you pass away your time if you had no work to do?  Men who retire at your age are always sorry:  They wither away and die of dry rot.”

“There’ll be plenty for me to be doing,” I told them.  “I’ll not be idle.”

But still they argued.  I was not greatly moved.  They were thinking of me, and their arguments appealed to my selfish interests and needs, and just then I was not thinking very much about myself.

And then another sort of argument came to me.  People wrote to me, men and women, who, like me, had lost their sons.  Their letters brought the tears to my eyes anew.  They were tender letters, and beautiful letters, most of them, and letters to make proud and glad, as well as sad, the heart of the man to whom they were written.  I will not copy those letters down here, for they were written for my eyes, and for no others.  But I can tell you the message that they all bore.