"Now, I haven't cheated you, have I?" he said. "There's your glass; drink it. I told you I would not interfere with you, and I am not doing so. I have finished the bottle, I am afraid, but you can get some more to-morrow. And while you are drinking--why don't you drink?--just listen to me a minute. I'm going to talk straight to you now. "What I have drunk will have no effect at all on me," he said. "You may sit here, and not have dinner, but I shall have dinner just the same, please. I drank that in order to show you how you have been a slave to a thing that has no real power or effect of any kind. What you have been a slave to is your intention, your false belief, your self-indulgence. And now at last you will see how unreal is the power of that stuff which you love so much compared to the Power which I love so much. It is through error that you have made an unreal thing real to you. It is through truth that I show you how unreal it is. And look what error has made of you! Think for a moment of what you were a year ago, and what you are to-day. There's a glass: look. You know without it." Thurso had risen, and was walking up and down the room, waving his hands in the impotent gesticulations of despair. Once or twice he paused by the table where his steaming glass still stood brimming, but he only shuddered at it. Once he tried to go to the curtain that led to the hall, but Cochrane stood in front of it, big, cheerful, but rather determined, blocking his way. "Aren't you going to drink that?" he asked, pointing to Thurso's untasted glass. "Aren't you going to have four hours of Paradise?" Thurso shrank from the table where the glass stood. "Oh, I implore you, I implore you!" he cried, "run to a doctor, take an emetic, and be quick. You have taken a fatal dose: you will be dead in a couple of hours. You are such a good chap: you've been so good to me, so patient, and have helped me so much. And this damnable habit of mine will have killed you. You don't know what you have done: you think drugs have no power. And you've done it to convince me. Oh, if you'll only go before it is too late, I will swear to you never to touch the stuff again. As for that----" He took his own glass, and flung it, contents and all, into the heart of the fire. There, with a huge puff of steam, a hissing and blackening of the wood logs, and crack of glass, it passed away up the chimney. "There, will that show you that I am in earnest?" he cried. "Just when I was worked up for it, just when I wanted it as I never wanted it before, you have caused me to do that! Oh, I implore you to go and make yourself sick. Maud! Maud! tell him to do something. If he doesn't I shall have killed him, and he has helped me so, has helped me--damned beast that I am!"