ith others who lead a strictly impersonal life, he possessed
the quality of utter bravery, and was always ready to face any
combination of circumstances, no matter how terrible, because he saw in
them the just working-out of past causes he had himself set in motion
which could not be dodged or modified. And whereas the majority of
people had little meaning for him, either by way of attraction or
repulsion, the moment he met some one with whom he felt his past had
been _vitally_ interwoven his whole inner being leapt up instantly and
shouted the fact in his face, and he regulated his life with the utmost
skill and caution, like a sentry on watch for an enemy whose feet could
already be heard approaching.

Thus, while the great majority of men and women left him
uninfluenced--since he regarded them as so many souls merely passing
with him along the great stream of evolution--there were, here and
there, individuals with whom he recognised that his smallest intercourse
was of the gravest importance. These were persons with whom he knew
in every fibre of his being he had accounts to settle, pleasant or
otherwise, arising out of dealings in past lives; and into his relations
with these few, therefore, he concentrated as it were the efforts that
most people spread over their intercourse with a far greater number. By
what means he picked out these few individuals only those conversant
with the startling processes of the subconscious memory may say, but the
point was that Jones believed the main purpose, if not quite the entire
purpose, of his present incarnation lay in his faithful and thorough
settling of these accounts, and that if he sought to evade the least
detail of such settling, no matter how unpleasant, he would have lived
in vain, and would return to his next incarnation with this added duty
to perform. For according to his beliefs there was no Chance, and could
be no ultimate shirking, and to avoid a problem was merely to waste time
and lose opportunities for development.

And there was one individual with whom Jones had long understood clearly
he had a very large account to settle, and towards the accomplishment
of which all the main currents of his being seemed to bear him with
unswerving purpose. For, when he first entered the insurance office as a
junior clerk ten years before, and through a glass door had caught sight
of this man seated in an inner room, one of his sudden overwhelming
flashes of intuitive memor