r 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?

His doubts glowed into assurance.

Suddenly he perceived that he was sure of God.

Not perhaps of the God of Nicaea, but what did these poor little
quibblings and definitions of the theologians matter? He had been
worrying about these definitions and quibblings for f