I see it is with you as with the birches: I am not to speak to you in the personal way. Much has passed between us. Or was it always only on the one side? I am at fault, at fault, I asked you to be human—I am no needier than other people. But the absence of all feeling, of the least concern for me—I might as well go on addressing the birches, as in my former life: let them do their worst, let them bury me with the Romantics, their pointed yellow leaves falling and covering me.
