But he was proved not to be so helpless as he had thought.

Again he knew where a good night's rest might be had by one using ordinary discretion.
Again that day, the fourth of his double life, he went the mad pace, a well-fed, carefree youth, sauntering idly from stage to stage, regarding nonchalantly the joys and griefs, the twistings of human destiny there variously unfolded.

Not only was he this to the casual public notice; to himself he was this, at least consciously.

True, in those nether regions of the mind so lately discovered and now being so expertly probed by Science, in the mind's dark basement, so to say, a certain unlovely fronted dragon of reality would issue from the gloom where it seemed to have been lurking and force itself upon his notice.
This would be at oddly contented moments when he least feared the future, when he was most successfully being to himself all that he must seem to others.

At such times when he leisurely walked a world of plenty and fruition, the dragon would half-emerge from its subconscious lair to chill him with its head composed entirely of repellent facts.