"
He sat up in bed struck by his own answer, and full of an indescribable
hunger for God and an indescribable sense of his complete want of
courage to make the one simple appeal that would satisfy that hunger.
He tried to pray. "O God!" he cried, "forgive me! Take me!" It seemed to
him that he was not really praying but only making believe to pray. It
seemed to him that he was not really existing but only seeming to exist.
He seemed to himself to be one with figures on a china plate, with
figures painted on walls, with the flimsy imagined lives of men in
stories of forgotten times. "O God!" he said, "O God," acting a gesture,
mimicking appeal.
"Anaemic," he said, and was given an idea.
He got out of bed, he took his keys from the night-table at the bed head
and went to his bureau.
He stood with Dale's tonic in his hand. He remained for some time
holding it, and feeling a curious indisposition to go on with the thing
in his mind.
He turned at last with an effort. He carried the little phial to his
bedside, and into the tumbler of his water-bottle he let the drops fall,
drop by drop, until he had counted twenty. Then holding it to the bulb
of his reading lamp he added the water and stood watching the slow
pearly eddies in the mixture mingle into an opalescent uniformity.
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