ug? It may have been anything. How did it
give you this--this vision of the truth--that led to your resignation?"

Scrope felt a sudden shyness. But he wanted Dale's drug again so badly
that he obliged himself to describe his previous experiences to the best
of his ability.

"It was," he said in a matter-of-fact tone, "a golden, transparent
liquid. Very golden, like a warm-tinted Chablis. When water was added
it became streaked and opalescent, with a kind of living quiver in it. I
held it up to the light."

"Yes? And when you took it?"

"I felt suddenly clearer. My mind--I had a kind of exaltation and
assurance."

"Your mind," Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey assisted, "began to go twenty-nine to
the dozen."

"It felt stronger and clearer," said Scrope, sticking to his quest.

"And did things look as usual?" asked the doctor, protruding his knobby
little face like a clenched fist.

"No," said Scrope and regarded him. How much was it possible to tell a
man of this type?

"They differed?" said the doctor, relaxing.

"Yes.... Well, to be plain.... I had an immediate sense of God. I
saw the world--as if it were a transparent curtain, and then God
became--evident.... Is it possible for that to determine the drug?"

"God became--evident," the doctor said with some distaste, and shook his
head slowly. Then in a sudden sharp cross-examining tone: "You mean you
had a vision? Actually saw 'um?"

"It was in the form of a vision." Scrope was now mentally very
uncomfortable indeed.

The doctor's lips repeated these words noiselessly, with an effect of
contempt. "He must have given you something--It's a little like morphia.
But golden--opalescent? And it was this vision made you astonish us all
with your resignation?"

"That was part of a larger process," said Scrope patiently. "I had been
drifting into a complete repudiation of the Anglican positions long
before that. All that this drug did was to make clear what was already
in my mind. And give it value. Act as a developer."

The doctor suddenly gave way to a botryoidal hilarity. "To think that
one should be consulted about visions of God--in Mount Street!" he said.
"And you know, you know you half want to believe that vision was real.
You know you do."

So far Scrope had been resisting his realization of failure. Now he
gave way to an exasperation that made him reckless of Brighton-Pomfrey's
opinion. "I do think," he said, "that that drug did in some way make God
real to