The Charwoman's Shadow by Lord Dunsany

Ramon Alonzo ran on in the night, then dropped to a walk, and soon he no more than sauntered along the road, whose greyness before him seemed the only light on earth. Above him the whiteness of the Milky Way seemed to suggest other roads, and his thoughts rambled awhile through the mazes of this idea until they were quite lost in it, then they came back bitterly to earth. The charwoman had been right! All this ridiculous fuss about a trifle, and not a trifle that they even set any store by themselves; for who prizes his shadow, who compares it with that of others, who shows it, who boasts of it? A trifle that they knew to be a trifle, the least useful thing on earth; a thing that nobody sold in the meanest shop and that nobody would if they could, and that nobody would buy, a thing without even a sentimental value, soundless and weightless and useless. Far more than this Ramon Alonzo thought, and believed he had definitely proved, to the detriment of shadows. No doubt he exaggerated a shadow's worthlessness. And yet the folk of that village that had turned out sword in hand had by their action exaggerated the other side of the argument, and extremes are made by extremes. Nor was Ramon Alonzo in any way checked in his furious exposure of shadows by any wistful yearning that he had often felt for his own since the day that he lost it, and was often to feel again. Logic indeed had been flouted upon either side in this business, and it is for just such situations as these that swords are made. Ramon Alonzo had used his well, and he wiped it now on a handful of leaves and returned it to the scabbard.

How late it was he did not know, but it was full time for sleep, so he lay down by the road; but without his cloak he found it too cold, even in the summer night, so he rose and sauntered on. On the way he met a stream and drank from it, and noticed the vivifying effect of water, perhaps for the first time.