The Charwoman's Shadow by Lord Dunsany

When Ramon Alonzo came out of the wood he saw that the shadows were already shortening. He saw then that he had delayed too long with the charwoman, and should have started while shadows were long, and so gone through the dark of the wood while his own was unnatural, and come to frequented ways while it was as other men's. And he felt ashamed of his dalliance. For had he been delayed by some radiant girl her beauty would have so dazzled him that he could not have seen his folly; but to come under the fascination of a most aged charwoman seemed a thing so unworthy of his knightly ambitions that he hung his head as he thought of it, and yet all the while remained true to his chivalrous plan to rescue her poor old shadow.

A little way he went; but, soon seeing men in the distance in the fields, he thought it better not to go beyond the last of the oaks that stood outside the wood, until other men's shadows should be a little longer, and so avoid the ill-informed foolish pother that folk seemed to make when all shadows were not exactly evenly matched. Already he had come to feel a vigorous scorn for the absurd importance that others attached to shadows. For youth argues rapidly, and -- in a way -- clearly, from whatever premises it has, not often tarrying to enquire if more premises be needed. These were some of the premises from which Ramon Alonzo argued: a shadow is of no possible value to anyone, nor does anyone ever suppose that it is; and, if it were, the poor old woman that lost hers should have been pitied; and he himself actually possessed a shadow, and, if it were too short, their own shadows had all been just as short an hour or two ago; and the same folk that called it too short in the evening would doubtless call it too long at noon. There is indeed a great deal of futility amongst the human race which we do not commonly see, for it all forms part of our illusion; but let a man be much annoyed by something that others do, so that he is separated from them and has to leave them, and looks back at what they are doing, and he will see at once all manner of whimsical absurdities that he had not noticed before; and Ramon Alonzo in the shade of his oak, waiting for the noon to go by, grew very contemptuous of the attitude that the world took up towards shadows.