The Gentleman who Vanished by Fergus Hume — Read

So Adrian, after his one glimpse of the woman he loved, left Paradise and returned with a heavy heart to his solitary existence at Hampstead. He had, it was true, promised to restore the lost sheep to the arms of the gentle shepherdess, but how this was to be done he did not know. There were two ways in which he could regain his identity, either that he should be killed in his present body by accident or that he should commit suicide. The former of these methods seemed unlikely to occur, as the number of people who meet with accidents is really very small, and as to the latter, although he was no coward yet he shrank with a vague dread from putting an end to his present existence.

It was true that Roversmire had informed him, that his soul would return to its own tenement, but suppose he was wrong and the soul, powerless to enter its former habitation, should remain suspended like the coffin of Mahomet between heaven and earth? The last case would be worse than the first, and Adrian, in spite of what was at stake, could hardly be blamed for preferring his present condition, unsatisfactory as it was, to a possible chance of leaving the world altogether.