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The First Vision4
The bishop sat reflecting. What fascinated and attracted him was the ending of all the cravings and uneasinesses and restlessness that had distressed his life for over four years; what deterred him was the personality of this gaunt young man with his long grey face, his excited manner, his shock of black hair. He wanted that tonic--with grave misgivings. "If you think this tonic is the wiser course," he began. "I`d give it you if you were my father," said Dr. Dale. "I`ve got everything for it," he added.
"You mean you can make it up--without a prescription."
"I can`t give you a prescription. The essence of it--It`s a distillate I have been trying. It isn`t in the Pharmacopeia."
Again the bishop had a twinge of misgiving.
But in the end he succumbed. He didn`t want to take the stuff, but also he did not want to go without his promised comfort.
Presently Dale had given him a little phial--and was holding up to the window a small medicine glass into which he was pouring very carefully twenty drops of the precious fluid. "Take it only," he said, "when you feel you must."
"It is the most golden of liquids," said the bishop, peering at it.
"When you want more I will make you more. Later of course, it will be possible to write a prescription. Now add the water-- so.
"It becomes opalescent. How beautifully the light plays in it!
"Take it."
The bishop dismissed his last discretion and drank.
"Well?" said Dr. Dale.
"I am still here," said the bishop, smiling, and feeling a joyous tingling throughout his body. "It stirs me."
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