Two stories of O. Henry that share a common theme are "The Last Leaf" and "A Retrieved Reformation." This theme is one that illustrates the power of unselfish love.
In "The Last Leaf" two people who live in Greenwich Village, home to aspiring artists, Sue and Mr. Behrman, love Johnsy who has contracted pneumonia in the New York winter and begins to lose her will to live. When the bedridden and ailing Johnsy tells Sue that like the falling ivy leaves outside her window, when the last one falls she "must go, too," Sue tells her friend that she must draw in this room where the light is good. She makes Johnsy promise that she will keep her eyes closed until she is finished. While Johnsy lies quietly, Sue rushes downstairs to speak with old Mr. Behrman, another painter, who is "a failure." Because he has never painted his "masterpiece," he earns a little money modeling, so Sue asks him to model for her.
Sue also tells Behrman of Johnsy's foolish fancy; Behrman becomes angered,
"Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick."
He accompanies Sue upstairs and looks at Johnsy for whom he has great tenderness. Secretly that night Mr. Behrman paints a leaf on the window by climbing a ladder in the cold and wet outdoors. So, when Johnsy awakens the next day and she sees the leaf still in place, her perspective of the tenacity of the leaf motivates her to get well, and she searches within herself for the mental strength to return to health. However, Mr. Behrman's "masterpiece" of love painted in the wretched cold, gives him pneumonia. Unfortunately, the old man dies as a result of his love for another.
While Behrman's love transforms Johnsy, Jimmy Valentine's unselfish love for Annabel Adams transforms his life, and, like Behrman, Jimmy risks his own safety in a heroic act of love.
Having been released from prison for bank robberies, Valentine resumes his former life of crime until he comes to a small town in Arkansas to break a new safe being installed in the local bank. While he waits on the installment of this safe, Valentine enters the bank and sees the lovely daughter of the bank's owner.
Jimmy Valentine looked into her eyes, forgot what he was, and became another man.
After falling in love with Annabel, Valentine assumes a new identity with the intention of leaving his life of crime behind him. He opens a shoe store and has a good business. Further, he decides to give away his professional tools and plans to meet a former associate in Little Rock with his "kit of tools." However, when he accompanies the Adams family to the bank where they are to inspect the new safe, one of the little girls of the family shuts another child in the vault, "in a spirit of play," not realizing the import of what she does. Since the safe is on a timer, no one can open it. Annabel looks at her fiance and asks if he can do something.
He looked at her with a queer, soft smile on his lips and in his keen eyes.
"Annabel," he said, give me that rose you are wearing, will you?"
Jimmy--now known as Ralph--realizes that if he opens the safe, his criminal past will be exposed. But, he loves Annabel and the little relative is in danger, so he sacrifices his chances of marrying Annabel and cracks the safe with the tools that, ironically, he has with him.
As Valentine walks out of the bank after rescuing the little girl, a detective, who has watched the entire operation stands in the doorway. Since he is the detective who arrested Jimmy years ago, Valentine resigns himself to his immediate arrest. However, Detective Ben Price says he does not know him, and lets him pass.
So, in both stories two characters act selfishly out of love for another. Valentine is rewarded by being freed from a life of crime; Behrman has finally created "his masterpiece" with the ivy leaf that saves Johnsy.
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