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. I do not fear old age;
only the hard ascent to it has terrors for me. The day, the hour, when
we realise that something has gone from our lives; when the cry of our
heart provokes laughter in others!

To all of us women comes a time in life when we believe we can conquer
or deceive time. But soon we learn how unequal is the struggle. We all
come to it in the end.

Then we grow anxious. Anxious at the coming of day; still more anxious
at the coming of night. We deck ourselves out at night as though in this
way we could put our anxiety to flight.

We are careful about our food and our rest; we watch that our smiles
leave no wrinkles.... Yet never a word of our secret terror do we
whisper aloud. We keep silence or we lie. Sometimes from pride,
sometimes from shame.

Hitherto nobody has ever proclaimed this great truth: that as they grow
older--when the summer comes and the days lengthen--women become more
and more women. Their feminality goes on ripening into the depths of
winter.