ed--you gave them up."

"And the sooner I go back to them the better," said the bishop brightly.
"I quite see that."

"I wouldn't say that," said Dr. Dale....

(3)

"That," said Dr. Dale, "is just where my treatment of this case differs
from the treatment of "--he spoke the name reluctantly as if he disliked
the mere sound of it--"Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey."

"Hitherto, of course," said the bishop, "I've been in his hands."

"He," said Dr. Dale, "would certainly set about trying to restore your
old sphere of illusion, your old familiar sensations and ideas and
confidences. He would in fact turn you back. He would restore all your
habits. He would order you a rest. He would send you off to some holiday
resort, fresh in fact but familiar in character, the High lands, North
Italy, or Switzerland for example. He would forbid you newspapers and
order you to botanize and prescribe tranquillizing reading; Trollope's
novels, the Life of Gladstone, the works of Mr. A. C. Benson, memoirs
and so on. You'd go somewhere where there was a good Anglican chaplain,
and you'd take some of the services yourself. And we'd wash out the
effects of the Princhester water with Contrexeville, and afterwards
put you on Salutaris or Perrier. I don't know whether I shouldn't have
inclined to some such treatment before the war began. Only--"

He paused.

"You think--?"

Dr. Dale's face betrayed a sudden sombre passion. "It won't do now," he
said in a voice of quiet intensity. "It won't do now."

He remained darkly silent for so long that at last the bishop spoke.
"Then what," he asked, "do you suggest?

"Suppose we don't try to go back," said Dr. Dale. "Suppose we go on and
go through."

"Where?"

"To reality.

"I know it's doubtful, I know it's dangerous," he went on, "but I am
convinced that now we can no longer keep men's minds and souls in these
feathered nests, these spheres of illusion. Behind these veils there is
either God or the Darkness.... Why should we not go on?"

The bishop was profoundly perplexed. He heard himself speaking. "It
would be unworthy of my cloth," he was saying.

Dr. Dale completed the sentence: "to go back."

"Let me explain a little more," he said, "what I mean by 'going on.' I
think that this loosening of the ties of association that bind a man to
his everyday life and his everyday self is in nine cases out of ten a
loosening of the ties that bind him to everyday sanity. One common form
of this deta