the other region, because he was an old inhabitant, a rightful denizen,
and because he belonged there. It was, in fact, really a case of
dual personality; and a carefully drawn agreement existed between
Jones-of-the-fire-insurance-office and Jones-of-the-mysteries, by the
terms of which, under heavy penalties, neither region claimed him out of
hours.

For the moment he reached his rooms under the roof in Bloomsbury, and
had changed his city coat to another, the iron doors of the office
clanged far behind him, and in front, before his very eyes, rolled up
the beautiful gates of ivory, and he entered into the places of flowers
and singing and wonderful veiled forms. Sometimes he quite lost touch
with the outer world, forgetting to eat his dinner or go to bed, and lay
in a state of trance, his consciousness working far out of the body. And
on other occasions he walked the streets on air, half-way between the
two regions, unable to distinguish between incarnate and discarnate
forms, and not very far, probably, beyond the strata where poets,
saints, and the greatest artists have moved and thought and found their
inspiration. But this was only when some insistent bodily claim
prevented his full release, and more often than not he was entirely
independent of his physical portion and free of the real region, without
let or hindrance.

One evening he reached home utterly exhausted after the burden of the
day's work. The Manager had been more than usually brutal, unjust,
ill-tempered, and Jones had been almost persuaded out of his settled
policy of contempt into answering back. Everything seemed to have gone
amiss, and the man's coarse, underbred nature had been in the ascendant
all day long: he had thumped the desk with his great fists, abused,
found fault unreasonably, uttered outrageous things, and behaved