β
was not death for which she grieved, but life, life which had carved his mouth into such sorrow and had set hollows underneath his eyes, which had given him dreams of love in his youth and then had robbed him, had given him dreams in his age of free islands in a blue and tropic sea and had held him locked in a drab house in a little town. And as cruel as anything was death, which revealed him like this, when he was helpless any longer to hide that which alive he had hidden. She went away crying most passionately to her heart, βWe ought all to be free. Everybody ought to be free for himself, somehow. No one ought to come to death and never have known what freedom is.β When
β
β
Pearl S. Buck (This Proud Heart: A Novel)