The Rubicon by E.F. Benson — Read

The little grey ghost which visited Gertrude Carston in the early morning, soon became a _habitue_ of her waking hours. He was a very importunate little ghost, and having once been given the _entree_, he concluded that he was always welcome. But, though he was unpleasant enough at the time, he was slightly medicinal in character, or rather, not so much medicinal as health-giving. He did not exactly correct existing defects, but opened fresh springs within her. So far, however, he was medicinal, in that he was operative after the dose, which always continued bitter to the taste. But the bitterness was a good bitterness, and occasioned not discontent with Reggie, but discontent with herself, and it is always worth a good deal of bitterness to become wholesomely, not morbidly, discontented with oneself.

She began to see in her nature unsuspected limitations, a thing quite as salutary, though not perhaps so pleasant, as the sight of unsuspected distances. A consciousness of unsuspected distance is liable to breed content, which is more injurious to the average mind -- and she was quite average -- than the discouraging discovery of a near horizon of unsuspected limitations, for the latter cause a revolt of something within us -- which some call pride, and others spiritual aspiration -- which refuses to acquiesce, and insists on those limitations becoming merely landmarks and milestones.