“Tell me,” he said, “tell me.” (Cough.) “Had this drug that cleared your head—­anything to do with your resignation?”

And he put on his glasses disconcertingly, and threw his head back to watch the reply.

“It did help to clear up the situation.”

“Exactly,” said Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey in a tone that defined his own position with remorseless clearness.  “Exactly.”  And he held up a flat, arresting hand. .

“My dear Sir,” he said.  “How can you expect me to help you to a drug so disastrous?—­even if I could tell you what it is.”

“But it was not disastrous to me,” said Scrope.

“Your extraordinary resignation—­your still more extraordinary way of proclaiming it!”

“I don’t think those were disasters.”

“But my dear Sir!”

“You don’t want to discuss theology with me, I know.  So let me tell you simply that from my point of view the illumination that came to me—­this drug of Dr. Dale’s helping—­has been the great release of my life.  It crystallized my mind.  It swept aside the confusing commonplace things about me.  Just for a time I saw truth clearly....  I want to do so again.”

“Why?”

“There is a crisis in my affairs—­never mind what.  But I cannot see my way clear.”

Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey was meditating now with his eyes on his carpet and the corners of his mouth tucked in.  He was swinging his glasses pendulum-wise.  “Tell me,” he said, looking sideways at Scrope, “what were the effects of this drug?  It may have been anything.  How did it give you this—­this vision of the truth—­that led to your resignation?”

Scrope felt a sudden shyness.  But he wanted Dale’s drug again so badly that he obliged himself to describe his previous experiences to the best of his ability.

“It was,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone, “a golden, transparent liquid.  Very golden, like a warm-tinted Chablis.  When water was added it became streaked and opalescent, with a kind of living quiver in it.  I held it up to the light.”

“Yes?  And when you took it?”

“I felt suddenly clearer.  My mind—­I had a kind of exaltation and assurance.”

“Your mind,” Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey assisted, “began to go twenty-nine to the dozen.”

“It felt stronger and clearer,” said Scrope, sticking to his quest.

“And did things look as usual?” asked the doctor, protruding his knobby little face like a clenched fist.

“No,” said Scrope and regarded him.  How much was it possible to tell a man of this type?

“They differed?” said the doctor, relaxing.

“Yes....  Well, to be plain....  I had an immediate sense of God.  I saw the world—­as if it were a transparent curtain, and then God became—­evident....  Is it possible for that to determine the drug?”

“God became—­evident,” the doctor said with some distaste, and shook his head slowly.  Then in a sudden sharp cross-examining tone:  “You mean you had a vision?  Actually saw ’um?”