 His love of life and his acceptance of his own fate dominate all.It was in the midst of his sickness that he wrote his novel, "Barbara", while suffering from the fickleness of his lover, Estrid Bannister, and the collection provides a letter-by-letter account of the writing of the novel, ending in his last letter with the statement that three chapters still wait to be written.Of the intended contents of those chapters, he gives no hint, though he does state clearly that the novel is based on "the great human theme of Vanity"—and later develops this theme irrespective of the novel