blerful of tonic and
drank it off at a gulp.

(4)

For some moments nothing seemed to happen.

Then he began to feel stronger and less wretched, and then came a
throbbing and tingling of artery and nerve.

He had a sense of adventure, a pleasant fear in the thing that he had
done. He got out of bed, leaving his cup of tea untasted, and began to
dress. He had the sensation of relief a prisoner may feel who suddenly
tries his cell door and finds it open upon sunshine, the outside world
and freedom.

He went on dressing although he was certain that in a few minutes the
world of delusion about him would dissolve, and that he would find
himself again in the great freedom of the place of God.

This time the transition came much sooner and much more rapidly. This
time the phases and quality of the experience were different. He felt
once again that luminous confusion between the world in which a human
life is imprisoned and a circumambient and interpenetrating world, but
this phase passed very rapidly; it did not spread out over nearly half
an hour as it had done before, and almost immediately he seemed to
plunge away from everything in this life altogether into that outer
freedom he sought. And this time there was not even the elemental
scenery of the former vision. He stood on nothing; there was nothing
below and nothing above him. There was no sense of falling, no terror,
but a feeling as though he floated released. There was no light, but as
it were a clear darkness about him. Then it was manifest to him that he
was not alone, but that with him was that same being that in his former
vision had called himself the Angel of God. He knew this without knowing
why he knew this, and either he spoke and was answered, or he thought
and his thought answered him back. His state of mind on this occasion
was altogether different from the first vision of God; before it had
been spectacular, but now his perception was altogether super-sensuous.

(And nevertheless and all the time it seemed that very faintly he was
still in his room.)

It was he who was the first to speak. The great Angel whom he felt
rather than saw seemed to be waiting for him to speak.

"I have come," he said, "because once more I desire to see God."

"But you have seen God."

"I saw God. God was light, God was truth. And I went back to my life,
and God was hidden. God seemed to call me. He called. I heard him, I
sought him and I touched his hand. When I