CHAPTER II[ToC]
SUPPER WITH A MYSTIC
"I can look into your soul. D'you know what I see...? ... I see your soul."—John Masefield, "The Tragedy of Nan."
I stood absent-mindedly staring at the back of the taxi till it disappeared down Pall Mall and the Seraph brought me to earth with an invitation to supper.
"...if it won't be too much of an anti-climax to have supper with me alone," I heard him murmuring.
At that moment I wanted to stride away to the Park, tramp up and down by myself, and think—think calmly, think savagely, try every fashion of thinking.
"To be quite candid," I said, as I linked arms and turned in the direction of the Club, "if you nailed me down like a Strasburg goose, I don't believe you could fill me fuller than you've already done at dinner."
"Let me bear you company, then. It'll keep you from thinking. Wait a minute; I want to have this prescription made up."
I followed him into a chemist's shop and waited patiently while a powerful soporific was compounded. I have myself subsisted too many years on heroic remedies to retain the average Englishman's horror of what he calls "drugs." At the same time I do not like to see boys of six and twenty playing with toys as dangerous as the Seraph's little grey-white powders; nor do I like to see them so much as feeling the need.
"Under advice?" I asked, as we came out into the street.