luctantly interested. "That does describe something--of
the mental side," he admitted. "I never believe in concealing my own
thoughts from an intelligent patient," said Dr. Dale, with a quiet
offensiveness. "That sort of thing belongs to the dark ages of the
'pothecary's art. I will tell you exactly my guesses and suppositions
about you. At the base of it all is a slight and subtle kidney trouble,
due I suggest to your going to Princhester and drinking the local
water--"

"But it's excellent water. They boast of it."

"By all the established tests. As a matter of fact many of our best
drinking waters have all sorts of unspecified qualities. Burton water,
for example, is radioactive by Beetham's standards up to the ninth
degree. But that is by the way. My theory about your case is that this
produced a change in your blood, that quickened your sensibilities and
your critical faculties just at a time when a good many bothers--I don't
of course know what they were, but I can, so to speak, see the marks all
over you--came into your life."

The bishop nodded.

"You were uprooted. You moved from house to house, and failed to get
that curled up safe feeling one has in a real home in any of them."

"If you saw the fireplaces and the general decoration of the new
palace!" admitted the bishop. "I had practically no control."

"That confirms me," said Dr. Dale. "Insomnia followed, and increased the
feeling of physical strangeness by increasing the bodily disturbance. I
suspect an intellectual disturbance."

He paused.

"There was," said the bishop.

"You were no longer at home anywhere. You were no longer at home in your
diocese, in your palace, in your body, in your convictions. And then
came the war. Quite apart from everything else the mind of the whole
world is suffering profoundly from the shock of this war--much more
than is generally admitted. One thing you did that you probably did not
observe yourself doing, you drank rather more at your meals, you smoked
a lot more. That was your natural and proper response to the shock."

"Ah!" said the bishop, and brightened up.

"It was remarked by Tolstoy, I think, that few intellectual men would
really tolerate the world as it is if it were not for smoking and
drinking. Even novelists have their moments of lucidity. Certainly these
things soothe the restlessness in men's minds, deaden their sceptical
sensibilities. And just at the time when you were getting most
dislodg