We do not grieve for the dead because they have been deprived of the pleasures of this life (if this life be a pleasure), but because of our own loss. But who would impugn such selfishness? It is the best thing we have, it is our very selves. Think of a mistress's shame if her lover were to tell her that he loved her because she wished to be beloved, because he thought it would give her pleasure to be loved--she would hate him for such altruism, and deem him unworthy of her. She would certainly think like this, and turn her face from him for a while until some desire of possession would send her back to him. We are always thinking of ourselves directly or indirectly. I was thinking of myself when shame prevented me from going to meet the poor wood-gatherers; they would not have thought at all of the injustice of having been left to the labour of the fields while I had gone forth to enjoy the world; they would have been interested to see me again, and a few kind words would have made their load seem easier on their backs. Called back by a sudden association of ideas, I began to consider that shameful injustice is undoubtedly a part of our human lot, for we may only grieve passionately for the casual, or what seems the merely casual; perhaps because the ultimate law is hidden from us; I am thinking now of her who comes suddenly into our lives tempting us with colour, fugitive as that of a flower, luring us with light as rapid as the light shed from the wings of a dove. Why, I asked myself, as I lay under the larches, are we to mourn transitory delight so intensely, why should it possess us more entirely than the sorrow that we experience for her who endured the labour of child-bearing, who nourished us perchance at her breast, whose devotion to us was unceasing, and who grew kindlier and more divorced from every thought of self as the years went by? From injustice there can be no escape, not a particle. At best we can, indeed we must, acquiesce in the fact that the only sorrow to be found in our hearts for aged persons is a sort of gentle sorrow, such as the year itself administers to our senses in autumn, when we come home with our hands full of the beautiful single dahlias that the Dutchmen loved and painted, bound up with sprays of reddening creepers; we come home along the sunny roads over which the yellow beeches lean so pathetically, and we are sad for the year, but we do not grieve passionately; our hearts do not break.