Archbishop Pontifex. And seventy miles away from him old Likeman
breakfasted in bed on Benger's food, and searched his Greek Testament
for tags to put to his letters. And here was the familiar palace at
Princhester, and in an armchair in his bed-room sat Bishop Scrope
insensible and motionless, in a trance in which he was dreaming of the
coming of God.

"I see my futility. I see my vanity. But what am I to do?" he said,
turning to the darkness that now wrapped about the Angel again, fold
upon fold. "The implications of yesterday bind me for the morrow. This
is my world. This is what I am and what I am in. How can I save myself?
How can I turn from these habits and customs and obligations to the
service of the one true God? When I see myself, then I understand how it
is with the others. All we priests and teachers are men caught in nets.
I would serve God. Easily said! But how am I to serve God? How am I to
help and forward His coming, to make myself part of His coming?"

He perceived that he was returning into himself, and that the vision of
the sphere and of the starry spaces was fading into non-existence.

He struggled against this return. He felt that his demand was still
unanswered. His wife's face had suddenly come very close to him, and he
realized she intervened between him and that solution.

What was she doing here?

(9)

The great Angel seemed still to be near at hand, limitless space was all
about him, and yet the bishop perceived that he was now sitting in the
arm-chair in his bedroom in the palace of Princhester. He was both
there and not there. It seemed now as if he had two distinct yet kindred
selves, and that the former watched the latter. The latter was now
awakening to the things about him; the former marked his gestures and
listened with an entire detachment to the words he was saying. These
words he was saying to Lady Ella: "God is coming to rule the world, I
tell you. We must leave the church."

Close to him sat Lady Ella, watching him with an expression in which
dismay and resolution mingled. Upon the other side of him, upon a little
occasional table, was a tray with breakfast things. He was no longer the
watcher now, but the watched.

Lady Ella bent towards him as he spoke. She seemed to struggle with and
dismiss his astonishing statement.

"Edward," she said, "you have been taking a drug." He looked round at
his night table to see the little phial. It had gone. Then he saw that
Lady