which seems to have been running from a long distance, turns the corner, and comes speeding down towards him.  He has not time to close the door, but stands aside to let it pass; it passes, and slips behind him; and soon he sees that it is a shadow of himself, which has fallen on the floor at his feet.  He asks what has happened, and then the old woman says that he has found his shadow, a thing which happens to many people; and then for the first time she raises her head and looks at him, and he sees that her mouth is full of long white teeth; he knows where he is at last, and stumbles out, with the dark shadow at his heels, which is to haunt him so miserably for many a sad day.

That is a very fine and true similitude of what befalls many men and women.  They go astray, they give up some precious thing—­their innocence perhaps—­to a deluding temptation.  They are delivered for a time; and then a little while after they find their shadow, which no tears or anguish of regret can take away, till the healing of life and work and purpose annuls it.  Neither is it always annulled, even in length of days.

But it is a paltry and inglorious mistake to let the shadow have its disheartening will of us.  It is only a shadow, after all!  And if we capitulate after our first disastrous encounter, it does not mean that we shall be for ever vanquished, though it means perhaps a long and dreary waste of shame-stained days.  That is what we must try to avoid—­any waste of time and strength.  For if anything is certain, it is that we have all to fight until we conquer, and the sooner we take up the dropped sword again the better.

And we have also to learn that no one can help us except ourselves.  Other people can sympathise and console, try to soothe our injured vanity, try to persuade us that the dangers and disasters ahead are not so dreadful as they appear to be, and that the mistakes we have made are not irreparable.  But no one can remove danger or regret from us, or relieve us of the necessity of facing our own troubles; the most that they can do, indeed, is to encourage us to try again.

But we cannot hope to change the conditions of life; and one of its conditions is, as I have said, that we cannot foresee dangers.  No matter how vividly they are described to us, no matter how eagerly those who love us try to warn us of peril, we cannot escape.  For that is the essence of life—­experience; and though we cannot rejoice when we are in the grip of it, and when we cannot see what the end will be, we can at least say to ourselves again and again, “this is at all events reality—­this is business!” for it is the moments of endurance and energy and action which after all justify us in living, and not the pleasant spaces where we saunter among flowers and sunlit woods.  Those are conceded to us, to tempt us to live, to make us desire to remain in the world; and we need not be afraid to take them, to use them, to enjoy them; because all things alike help to make us what we are.