“Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” What right has a little bishop in a purple stock and doeskin breeches, who hangs back in his palace from the very call of God, to a phrase so fine and tragic as “the body of this death?”

He was the most unreal thing in the universe.  He was a base insect giving himself airs.  What advantage has a bishop over the Praying Mantis, that cricket which apes the attitude of piety?  Does he matter more—­to God?

“To the God of the Universe, who can tell?  To the God of man,—­yes.”

He sat up in bed struck by his own answer, and full of an indescribable hunger for God and an indescribable sense of his complete want of courage to make the one simple appeal that would satisfy that hunger.  He tried to pray.  “O God!” he cried, “forgive me!  Take me!” It seemed to him that he was not really praying but only making believe to pray.  It seemed to him that he was not really existing but only seeming to exist.  He seemed to himself to be one with figures on a china plate, with figures painted on walls, with the flimsy imagined lives of men in stories of forgotten times.  “O God!” he said, “O God,” acting a gesture, mimicking appeal.

“Anaemic,” he said, and was given an idea.

He got out of bed, he took his keys from the night-table at the bed head and went to his bureau.

He stood with Dale’s tonic in his hand.  He remained for some time holding it, and feeling a curious indisposition to go on with the thing in his mind.

He turned at last with an effort.  He carried the little phial to his bedside, and into the tumbler of his water-bottle he let the drops fall, drop by drop, until he had counted twenty.  Then holding it to the bulb of his reading lamp he added the water and stood watching the slow pearly eddies in the mixture mingle into an opalescent uniformity.  He replaced the water-bottle and stood with the glass in his hand.  But he did not drink.

He was afraid.

He knew that he had only to drink and this world of confusion would grow transparent, would roll back and reveal the great simplicities behind.  And he was afraid.

He was afraid of that greatness.  He was afraid of the great imperatives that he knew would at once take hold of his life.  He wanted to muddle on for just a little longer.  He wanted to stay just where he was, in his familiar prison-house, with the key of escape in his hand.  Before he took the last step into the very presence of truth, he would—­think.

He put down the glass and lay down upon his bed....

(3)