But the moment that my eyes fell upon these gleaming white walls my mood was changed, and I saw another vision of life. At that moment, as when a loved person enters a room, it seemed to me as if the footlights of the world were suddenly turned up, and I could hear the strings and flutes of the great orchestra of life. I saw the road before me dancing away to the hills, and the hills themselves standing in silent jubilation. It was one of those rare moments when the passion, the wonder, the mystery of life smite through a man’s flesh and bone, and set his spirit towering above good and evil fortune, fearless, exultant, eager for the best and worst of human existence. Such moments come to us on a sudden wave of exultation, and then leave us to be carried gently forward by the customary easy flow of thoughts and emotions. What marks their passage in a man’s life, what heroic promptings they bring, what valorous decisions are born of their passing cannot be told, least of all by the man himself. I know that I stayed for a few seconds on the crest of the hill, and then continued my walk. The rare moment had come and gone, sweeping away my former dull mood and leaving me in a pleasant reverie. I walked along, thinking, maybe, of inns and the part they have played in Romance, or of whitened walls and the time when even London was a city of white buildings; or I thought about myself (as you do), and what a fine fellow I should be if I were not a fool. It is no great matter what I thought. But mark how little of a man’s life he can explain, no matter how often he opens the doors and searches the dusty lumber rooms of his mind. There was no reason, in or out of nature, for my first mood of depression. And, to me, there would seem as little reason for the sudden change, the momentary exultation, and the pleasant aftermath. At times the sight of a mountain of felicity will not raise a man’s spirits; at other times, if his foot trips over a molehill, he will cry out in ecstasy at the goodness of life. We never talk to less purpose than when we say of a man who is almost a stranger: ‘He ought to be happy, for he has this and that at his command.’ Knowing our man, and being aware of what life is doing with him and what he is doing with life, we might hazard a guess at his state of mind, but even then it is perilous. Mark also how we realise the beauty and blessing of life itself only in rare, inexplicable moments, and then most keenly. It comes to us then like a sudden blare of trumpets in the wind. We are always ready to talk and write about the wonder of human existence, but, unless we are something more than common men, we do not pass the day and lie down at night thrilled by the thought of our participation in this greatest of games. We go our way as best we can, carried forward or swept back by the ebb and flow of circumstance, and are by turn triumphant, masterful, listless, fearful, despairing.