joy out of
his heart, but he has made his escape from her, and thinks he has
learned his lesson.

But he comes at last to the long low house in the clearing; he finds
within it an ancient woman reading out of an old volume; he enters, he
examines the room in which she sits, and yielding to curiosity, he
opens the door of the great cupboard in the corner, in spite of a
muttered warning. He thinks, on first opening it, that it is just a
dark cupboard; but he sees with a shock of surprise that he is looking
into a long dark passage, which leads out, far away from where he
stands, into the starlit night. Then a figure, 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