Death is a face-to-face intimacy; age, a thickening of the mortal mask between souls.

So I hate it; put it far from me.

Why talk of age, when it's just an appearance, an accident, when we are all young in soul and heart?
We don't say, one to another, 'You are freckled in the forehead to-day,' or 'There's a yellow shade in your complexion.' Leave those disagreeable trifles.

I, for my part, never felt younger.

Did _you_, I wonder?
To be sure not.