o loving souls, Vanity is forever shut out.
Jealousy dare not show her malignant face. These two are facing the
world together, side by side and shoulder to shoulder, each the other's
strength and shield.

Success may come only after many failures; the tide may not turn till
after long discouragement and great despair. But in the union with that
other soul, so gently baring its inmost dream that the other may
understand, defeat loses its sting.

[Sidenote: The Sanctuary of that Other Soul]

Ambition forever beckons, like a will o' the wisp. When realisation
seems within easy reach, the dream fades, or another, seemingly
unattainable, mockingly takes its place. But in the sanctuary of that
other soul, there is always new courage to be found. Long aisles and
quiet spaces lessen the fever and the unrest. Darkness and cool shadows
soothe the burning eyes, and in the clasp of those loving arms there is
certain sleep.

Vanity cares for nothing which is not in some way its own, and it is
perhaps an amorphous vanity, as carbon is akin to a diamond, that makes
a hard-won victory doubly dear.

There are always sycophants to fawn and flatter, there are hands that
will gladly help that they may claim their share of the result, but that
realised dream is wholly sweet in which only the dreamer and the other
soul have fully believed. Failure, even, is more easily borne if it is
entirely one's own; if there is no one else to be blamed.

[Sidenote: The Bitter Proof]

"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." So spake the prophet in Jerusalem
and the centuries have brought the bitter proof. Vanity has reared
palaces which have vanished like the architecture of a mirage. Vanity
has led the hosts against itself.

Where are Babylon and Nineveh; the hanging gardens and the splendour of
forgotten kings? Where are Caesar and Cleopatra; Trianon and Marie
Antoinette? Where is the lordly Empire of France? Is it buried with
military honours, in the grave of the exiled Napoleon?

Vanity's pomp endureth for a day, but Vanity itself is perennial. Vanity
sets whole races of men in motion, pitting them against each other
across intervening seas.

One woman has a stone, no larger than a pea, brought from a mine in
South Africa. Vanity sets it proudly upon her breast and leads other
women to envy her its possession, for purely selfish reasons. One
woman's gown is made from a plant which grows in Georgia and she is
unhappy because it is not the pr