our ordinary medical science. It was afflicting him with a general
malaise, it was affecting his energy, his temper, all the balance and
comfort of his nerves. All day he was weary; all night he was wakeful.
He was estranged from his body. He was distressed by a sense of
detachment from the things about him, by a curious intimation of
unreality in everything he experienced. And with that went this levity
of conscience, a heaviness of soul and a levity of conscience, that
could make him talk as though the Creeds did not matter--as though
nothing mattered....

If only he could smoke!

He was persuaded that a couple of Egyptian cigarettes, or three at the
outside, a day, would do wonders in restoring his nervous calm. That,
and just a weak whisky and soda at lunch and dinner. Suppose now--!

His conscience, his sense of honour, deserted him. Latterly he had had
several of these conscience-blanks; it was only when they were over that
he realized that they had occurred.

One might smoke up the chimney, he reflected. But he had no cigarettes!
Perhaps if he were to slip downstairs....

Why had he given up smoking?

He groaned aloud. He and his reflection eyed one another in mutual
despair.

There came before his memory the image of a boy's face, a swarthy little
boy, grinning, grinning with a horrible knowingness and pointing
his finger--an accusing finger. It had been the most exasperating,
humiliating, and shameful incident in the bishop's career. It was
the afternoon for his fortnightly address to the Shop-girls' Church
Association, and he had been seized with a panic fear, entirely
irrational and unjustifiable, that he would not be able to deliver the
address. The fear had arisen after lunch, had gripped his mind, and then
as now had come the thought, "If only I could smoke!" And he had smoked.
It seemed better to break a vow than fail the Association. He had fallen
to the temptation with a completeness that now filled him with shame and
horror. He had stalked Dunk, his valet-butler, out of the dining-room,
had affected to need a book from the book-case beyond the sideboard,
had gone insincerely to the sideboard humming "From Greenland's icy
mountains," and then, glancing over his shoulder, had stolen one of
his own cigarettes, one of the fatter sort. With this and his bedroom
matches he had gone off to the bottom of the garden among the laurels,
looked everywhere except above the wall to be sure that he was alone,