I was determined to know the worst once for all . The time had come when I must . My doctor at home had put me off with vague hopes and perhapses . So I went to a noted physician in the city . I told him I wanted the whole truth -- I made him tell it . Stripped of all softening verbiage it is this : I have perhaps eight months or a year to live -- no more ! I had expected it , although not quite so soon . Yet the certainty was none the less bitter . But this is no time for self-pity . It is of Sylvia I must think now . I shall go away at once , before the sweet fancy which is possibly budding in her virgin heart shall have bloomed into a flower that might poison some of her fair years . July Nineteenth . It is over . I said good-bye to her to-day before others , for I dared not trust myself to see her alone . She looked hurt and startled , as if someone had struck her . But she will soon forget , even if I have not been mistaken in the reading of her eyes . As for me , the bitterness of death is already over in that parting . All that now remains is to play the man to the end . From further entries in the journal I learned that Alan Blair had returned to Sweetwater and later on had been ordered to California . The entries during his sojourn there were few and far between .
In all of them he spoke XXXXX Sylvia .
From So although between if in of on over with