The Ghost by Arnold Bennet Chapter 17 Page 12

it would not accept my surrender. I have dashed the image of Rosa from my heart, and I have done it to no purpose. I am dying. And so I write this for you, lest you should go unwarned to the same doom.

“The love of Rosa is worth dying for, if you can win it. (I could not even win it.) You will have to choose between Love and Life. I do not counsel you either way. But I urge you to choose. I urge you either to defy your foe utterly and to the death, or to submit before submission is useless.

“Alresca.”

I sat staring at the paper long after I had finished reading it, thinking about poor Alresca. There was a date to it, and this date showed that it was written a few days before his mysterious disease took a turn for the better.