He determined that, whatever happened, he would do no more work in which he did not believe, that he would say what he felt, not what traditional formulas required him to say. Work! he believed in that with all his heart, so long as it had an end, an object. To wrestle with the comprehension of some difficult matter, there were few pleasures like that! but it must have been an advance, when it was over; one must feel that one was stronger, more clear-minded, more alert, more sincere; one must not feel that one was only more weary, more dissatisfied. His path was clear before him at all events. Plans and schemes began to rise in Hugh's brain he felt as if he was delivered from the brooding sway of some evil and melancholy spirit. How strange was the power that physical conditions had upon the very stuff of the mind! Half-an-hour ago the grievances, the self-pity, the dissatisfaction had appeared to him to be real and tangible troubles; not indeed things which it was wise to brood over, but inevitable pains, to be borne with such philosophy as was attainable. But now they seemed as unreal, as untrue, as painful dreams, from which one wakes with a sharp and great relief. What remained with Hugh was the sense of one of the dangers of the solitary life--the over-influence, the preponderance of sentiment. The only serenity was to be found in claiming and expecting nothing, but in welcoming what came as a gift, as an added joy, to which one had indeed no right; but which fell like the sunshine and the rain; one must be ready to help, to work, to use one's strength at whatever point it could be best applied, and to look for no reward. This was what poisoned life, the claim to be paid in the coin that pleased one best. Payment indeed was made largely; and the blessed thing was that if one was not paid fully for one's efforts, neither was one paid relentlessly for one's mistakes. And then, as to the deeper shadows of the world, the sorrows, the bereavements, the sufferings, the dark possibilities, that lay like the shadows of trees across a sunlit road--death itself, that grim horizon that closed the view whichever way one looked--the mistake lay in attempting to reckon with them beforehand, to anticipate them, to discount them. They were all part of the plan, and one could not alter them. Better to let them come, to husband strength and joy to meet them, rather than to dissipate one's courage by dwelling upon them. Indeed all Hugh's experience showed him that troubles, even the deepest, wore a very different aspect when one was inside them.