Page:The Soul of a Bishop.djvu/194

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182
THE SOUL OF A BISHOP

various committees and an interview with Chasters. He had not yet finished his addresses for these confirmation services....

The task seemed mountainous—overwhelming....

With a gesture of desperation he seized the tumblerful 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