I don't want to go in bondage to the fear of age and death.

I want to grow old decently, and I am sure one ought to begin quite early learning how.
"'Clear eyes do dim at last And cheeks outlive their rose: Time, heedless of the past, No loving kindness knows.' Yes, and 'youth's a stuff will not endure,' and 'golden lads and girls all must like chimney-sweepers come to dust.' The poets aren't at all helpful, for youth--poor brave youth--won't listen to their warnings, and they seem to have no consolation to offer to middle age.
"The odd thing is that up to a week or two ago I greatly liked the life I led.

You said it would kill you in a month.

Was it only last May that you pranced in the drawing-room in Grosvenor Street inveighing against 'the whole beastly show,' as you called it--the freak fashions, the ugly eccentric dances, the costly pageant balls, the shouldering, the striving, the worship of money, the gambling, the self-advertisement--all the abject vulgarity of it?
And my set, the artistic, soulful literary set, you said was the worst of all: you actually described the high-priestess as looking like a 'decomposing cod-fish,' and added by way of a final insult that you thought the woman had a kind heart.
"And I laughed and thought the War had changed you.

It didn't change me, to my shame be it said.