Page:The Soul of a Bishop.djvu/124

112 "It won't do now," he said in a voice of quiet intensity. "It won't do now."

He remained darkly silent for so long that at last the bishop spoke.

"Then what," he asked, "do you suggest?"

"Suppose we don't try to go back," said Dr. Dale. "Suppose we go on and go through."

"Where?"

"To reality.

"I know it's doubtful, I know it's dangerous," he went on, "but I am convinced that now we can no longer keep men's minds and souls in these feathered nests, these spheres of illusion. Behind these veils there is either God or the Darkness.... Why should we not go on?"

The bishop was profoundly perplexed. He heard himself speaking. "It would be unworthy of my cloth," he was saying.

Dr. Dale completed the sentence: "to go back."

"Let me explain a little more," he said, "what I mean by 'going on.' I think that this loosening of the ties of association that bind a man to his everyday life and his everyday self is in nine cases out of ten a loosening of the ties that bind him to everyday sanity. One common form of this detachment is the form you have in those cases of people who are found wandering unaware of their names, unaware of their places of residence, lost altogether from themselves. They have not only lost their sense of