'Poor darlings—to suppose myself the most miserable being on earth in the presence of such misery as this!' she exclaimed, her tears running down as she killed the birds tenderly. 'And not a twinge of bodily pain about me! I am not mangled, and I am not bleeding, and I have two hands to feed and clothe me.' She was ashamed of herself for her gloom of the night, based on nothing more tangible than a sense of condemnation under an arbitrary law of society which had no foundation in Nature.
