“Exactly,” said Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey in a tone that defined his own position with remorseless clearness. “Exactly.” And he held up a flat, arresting hand. . “My dear Sir,” he said. “How can you expect me to help you to a drug so disastrous?--even if I could tell you what it is.” “But it was not disastrous to me,” said Scrope. “Your extraordinary resignation--your still more extraordinary way of proclaiming it!” “I don't think those were disasters.” “But my dear Sir!” “You don't want to discuss theology with me, I know. So let me tell you simply that from my point of view the illumination that came to me--this drug of Dr. Dale's helping--has been the great release of my life. It crystallized my mind. It swept aside the confusing commonplace things about me. Just for a time I saw truth clearly.... I want to do so again.” “Why?” “There is a crisis in my affairs--never mind what. But I cannot see my way clear.” Dr. Brighton-Pomfrey was meditating now with his eyes on his carpet and the corners of his mouth tucked in. He was swinging his glasses pendulum-wise. “Tell me,” he said, looking sideways at Scrope, “what were the effects of this drug? 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?”