"There are more in store, if you will have them."

"We will go," Dr Clark said sternly. He returned to Scotch, language of health and holiness, for his patient. "Ye're unco excitable, ye ken that? Bye and bye I maun consider what tae dae wi' yon stomach."

John facetiously took the yon for a true yonder and peered for the stomach in the corner shadows. "Aye," he then smiled. "Bye and bye is easily said. I do not mock. Remember I am still, on engrossed and wax-sigillaed parchment, of your confraternity. I do not think it is the stomach."

"We will see."

"Alas, yes. You will see."

When the visitors had left, Severn and John looked at each other. Severn brought the pianoforte lid gently down and looked again. John's eyes were now dulled, stilled, the lids brought gently down. He was sitting with left foot on right knee, shoe off, fondling his instep. He said:

"You were shocked. You will be shocked more before we are done."

"It is not to my taste, no more than that. It will seem namby pamby to you that I spoke so, but it is the way I was brought up. You are unused to Christians, I know. I think sometimes now of Providence. My being here, I mean."

"Cant and humbug, by your leave. Anyway, I talk of bigger shocks. The obscenity not of desperation but of dying. It will not be pretty, like some marble spaniel of Mr Ewing. Are you sure you wish to stay?"

"If I did not love you I would still speak of my Christian duty. Besides, I do not believe it. You are already better."

"In terms of my posthumous life, yes. I am not spewing blood. I fear our friend Clark may be right. I have pains in my stomach. I may add I have pain in my dumpendebat. Oh no, don't look newly shocked, nothing to do with the clap, big or little. Shall I say that I have loved like a gentleman, meaning to end unfulfilled, not to have cupped those breasts naked or even kissed deeply, and as for the other, the right true end – And I am wrong too to say gentleman, because we have been confined by our class which is neither gentlemanly nor ruffianly but plain pure middle, and poets of the middle zone are not permitted, by reason of their small sales, to be married.