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.