Borrow leaped to his feet and fled the scene of action.
Duke Harald bellowed jesting comments after him; and fell back on the bed, choking and gasping with mirth, wiping tears from his eyes.
Tears!
But they were more appropriate than laughter, now that he came to think of it; now that the esper drug had failed. For this was surely not telepathy. Far from it—this was more like sottish drunkenness. A swift depression seized Duke Harald, and he wept in truth, rolling on the bed, burying his face in the remaining pillow.
Exhausted, he lay still at last in a dull stupor. Vaguely he became aware that others had entered the room. He recognized the voice of Master Elwyn.
“…And I tell you that the drug does work. That it has worked! But in this matter, words are—”
Words, words, words! These are but wild and whirling words my lord. Laughter began again to bubble in Duke Harald’s throat.
“But—I do not understand—he said the drug was harmless!” That was Count Godfrey. The faint, protesting voice came thinly from the distance.
“Physically harmless. That is true. The drug produces total sensitivity to thought—to any thought. And what is closer to a man than his own mind? Even his own unconsciousness, with its long forgotten memories, its tangled and forbidden wishes? Expose an untrained consciousness to that, in its entirety, and—”
And then the drug took firmer hold. Within Duke Harald’s mind there grew a feeling of relentless pressure, of conflict, of barriers giving way before an almost overwhelming onslaught. He shouted loudly with exultant laughter—and, almost in that very instant, felt himself begin to weep with all the hopeless desperation of the damned.