youth in its quick-silver time. But later on in life we love combat
less.

Suddenly Lady Sellingworth realized the age of her mind, and it seemed
to her that she was a horrible mixture of incongruities. She was
physically aging slowly but surely. She had appetites which were in
direct conflict with age. She had desires all of which turned towards
youth. And her mind was quite old. It must be, she said to herself,
because now she was sitting still and longing to know that complete
peace of mind which an old man had talked of that evening at her dinner
table.

A sort of panic shook her as she thought of all the antagonists which at
a certain period of life gather together to attack and slay youth, all
vestiges of youth, in the human being; the unsatisfied appetites,
the revolts of the body, the wearinesses of soul, and the subtle and
contradictory desires which lie hidden deep in the mind.

She was now intensely careful about her body, had brought its care
almost to the level of a finely finished art. But she had not troubled
about the disciplining of her mind. Yet the undisciplined mind can work
havoc in the tissues of the body. Youth of the mind, if preserved, helps
the body to continue apparently young. It may not be able to cause the
body actually to look young, but in some mysterious way it throws round
the body a youthful atmosphere which deceives many people, which creates
an illusion. And the strange thing is that the more intimate people are
with one possessing that mental youthfulness, the more strong is the
illusion upon them. Atmosphere has a spell which increases upon us
the longer we remain bathed in it. Lady Sellingworth said all this to
herself that night, and rebuked herself for letting her mind go towards