What hopeless cowardice prevents my opening his letter!
EVENING.
Somebody should found a vast and cheerful sisterhood for women between
forty and fifty; a kind of refuge for the victims of the years of
transition. For during that time women would be happier in voluntary
exile, or at any rate entirely separated from the other sex.
Since all are suffering from the same trouble, they might help each
other to make life, not only endurable, but harmonious. We are all more
or less mad then, although we struggle to make others think us sane.
I say "we," though I am not of their number--in age, perhaps, but not in
temperament. Nevertheless I hear the stealthy footsteps of the
approaching years. By good fortune, or calculation, I have preserved my
youthful appearance, but it has cost me dear to economise my emotions.
Old age, in truth, is only a goal to be foreseen. A mountain to be
climbed; a peak from which to see life from every side--provided we
have not been blinded by snowfalls on the way.
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