With autumn came the query, What and where? The war had been gaining momentum. Obviously it was unwise to remain too long away from the base of supplies. Certain also it was that if we tore up our home, taking everything back to the States, it would mean remaining there. With one of us remaining in England a home might be resurrected. It was in consequence decided that Mr. Saltus should return to New York, and rejoin me after things looked a bit clearer. The pain in his legs increased so that he walked less and less each day, but when he saw how it worried me he pretended that he was getting better and had never been as well in his life. In his anxiety to spare me and his desire to avoid telling disagreeable things he made a frightful mistake. Had I known the truth, never would I have let him return alone.
Leaving England was always a tug at his heart-strings. He was reluctant to put an ocean between us and reluctant to turn his back on possible service. Little did either of us dream, however, that he was leaving his beloved British Museum for the last time. In Waterloo Station once more, the station in which he had said so many "good-byes," we said au revoir again.
Upon his return to New York Mr. Saltus took rooms near the Manhattan Club and began to write a few articles on the origin of the war. Since "The Monster," he had attempted nothing of a sustained or exhausting character. It was not long before his letters became filled with anxiety over the distance between us, and he began to write--jestingly, to be sure--of acute indigestion, which, gripping him suddenly and sharply, had dropped like a vulture out of the air. As he expressed it, "Karma has me, not by the heels, at last, but by the solar plexus first." Added to the distress in his legs, which he finally admitted, were these attacks, so sharp and severe that after the slightest exertion he had to sit down faint from the pain. Had the war been over he was in no condition to take a journey. Miss G----afterward told me that he had greatly minimized the seriousness of his condition in writing me of it. Still his hope of returning to England persisted. The letters which followed me to Scotland, Ireland and back to England again were full of it.