There could be no return. He was in a
maelstrom of agony, his veins were afire, his lips were parched. He
sprang from his bed, knelt down, and felt for the little phial he had
flung aside. After a moment his hand caught it, clutched it. But, even at
the crest of the wave of temptation, words that he had heard one night in
Hamley, that last night of all, flashed into his mind--the words of old
Luke Claridge's prayer, "And if a viper fasten on his hand, O Lord--"
Suddenly he paused. That scene in the old Meetinghouse swam before his
eyes, got into his brain. He remembered the words of his own prayer, and
how he had then retreated upon the Power that gave him power, for a
draught of the one true tincture which braced the heart to throw itself
upon the spears of trial. Now the trial had come, and that which was in
him as deep as being, the habit of youth, the mother-fibre and
predisposition, responded to the draught he had drunk then. As a body
freed from the quivering, unrelenting grasp of an electric battery
subsides into a cool quiet, so, through his veins seemed to pass an ether
which stilled the tumult, the dark desire to drink the potion in his
hand, and escape into that irresponsible, artificial world, where he had
before loosened his hold on activity.
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