“You’d drug me on to the new,” said the bishop.

“But just one word more!” said Dr. Dale.  “Hear why I would do this!  It was easy and successful to rest and drug people back to their old states of mind when the world wasn’t changing, wasn’t spinning round in the wildest tornado of change that it has ever been in.  But now—­Where can I send you for a rest?  Where can I send you to get you out of sight and hearing of the Catastrophe?  Of course old Brighton-Pomfrey would go on sending people away for rest and a nice little soothing change if the Day of Judgment was coming in the sky and the earth was opening and the sea was giving up its dead.  He’d send ’em to the seaside.  Such things as that wouldn’t shake his faith in the Channel crossing.  My idea is that it’s not only right for you to go through with this, but that it’s the only thing to do.  If you go right on and right through with these doubts and intimations—­”

He paused.

“You may die like a madman,” he said, “but you won’t die like a tame rabbit.”

(4)

The bishop sat reflecting.  What fascinated and attracted him was the ending of all the cravings and uneasinesses and restlessness that had distressed his life for over four years; what deterred him was the personality of this gaunt young man with his long grey face, his excited manner, his shock of black hair.  He wanted that tonic—­with grave misgivings.  “If you think this tonic is the wiser course,” he began.  “I’d give it you if you were my father,” said Dr. Dale.  “I’ve got everything for it,” he added.

“You mean you can make it up—­without a prescription.”

“I can’t give you a prescription.  The essence of it—­It’s a distillate I have been trying.  It isn’t in the Pharmacopeia.”

Again the bishop had a twinge of misgiving.

But in the end he succumbed.  He didn’t want to take the stuff, but also he did not want to go without his promised comfort.

Presently Dale had given him a little phial—­and was holding up to the window a small medicine glass into which he was pouring very carefully twenty drops of the precious fluid.  “Take it only,” he said, “when you feel you must.”

“It is the most golden of liquids,” said the bishop, peering at it.

“When you want more I will make you more.  Later of course, it will be possible to write a prescription.  Now add the water—­so.

“It becomes opalescent.  How beautifully the light plays in it!

“Take it.”

The bishop dismissed his last discretion and drank.

“Well?” said Dr. Dale.

“I am still here,” said the bishop, smiling, and feeling a joyous tingling throughout his body.  “It stirs me.”

(5)

The bishop stood on the pavement outside Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey’s house. 
The massive door had closed behind him.

It had been an act of courage, of rashness if you will, to take this draught.  He was acutely introspective, ready for anything, for the most disagreeable or the most bizarre sensations.  He was asking himself, Were his feet steady?  Was his head swimming?