The actor, who absorbs and then reflects from
himself other human lives, needs them all, but needs not much more. This
is her end; but how to reach it? Before her are endless difficulties:
seas must be crossed, poverty must be endured, loneliness, want. She must
be content to wait long before she can even get her feet upon the path. If
she has made blunders in the past, if she has weighted herself with a
burden which she must bear to the end, she must but bear the burden
bravely, and labour on. There is no use in wailing and repentance here:
the next world is the place for that; this life is too short. By our
errors we see deeper into life. They help us." She waited for a while.
"If she does all this--if she waits patiently, if she is never cast down,
never despairs, never forgets her end, moves straight toward it, bending
men and things most unlikely to her purpose--she must succeed at last. Men
and things are plastic; they part to the right and left when one comes
among them moving in a straight line to one end. I know it by my own
little experience," she said. "Long years ago I resolved to be sent to
school. It seemed a thing utterly out of my power; but I waited, I
watched, I collected clothes, I wrote, took my place at the school; when
all was ready I bore with my full force on the Boer-woman, and she sent me
at last.
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