Fools we were, for a dominant emotion is not so easily
banished, and we were for ever recurring to it in a hundred ways direct
and indirect. A real fear cannot be so easily trifled with, and while we
toyed on the surface with thousands and thousands of words--mere
words--our sub-conscious activities were steadily gaining force, and
would before very long have to be properly acknowledged. We could not
get away from it. At last, when he had finished the recital of an
adventure which brought him near enough to a horrible death, I admitted
that in my uneventful life I had never yet been face to face with a
real fear. It slipped out inadvertently, and, of course, without
intention, but the tendency in him at the time was too strong to be
resisted. He saw the loophole, and made for it full tilt.
"It is the same with all the emotions," he said. "The experiences of
others never give a complete account. Until a man has deliberately
turned and faced for himself the fiends that chase him down the years,
he has no knowledge of what they really are, or of what they can do.
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