«Yes.»
Francis was putting a glass into my hand. «Are you ill?»
«Yes.»
«What's the matter?»
I drank some whisky and choked a bit. I felt extremely sick and also unable to distinguish physical from mental pain.
«Brad, we waited all evening for you.»
«Why? Where?»
«You said you'd come to see Priscilla.»
«Oh. Priscilla. Yes.» I had totally and absolutely forgotten Pris– cilla's existence.
«We rang up here.»
«I was out to dinner.»
«Had you just forgotten?»
«Yes.»
«Arnold was there till after eleven. He wanted to see you about something. He was in a bit of a state.»
«How fs Priscilla?»
«Much the same. Chris wants to know if you'd mind if she had de^1^'treatment-«
«You mean you don't mind? You know it destroys cells in the brain?»
«Then she'd better not have it.»
«On the other hand-'
«I ought to see Priscilla,» I said, I think, aloud. But I knew that I just couldn't. I had not got a grain of spirit to offer to any other person. I could not expose myself in my present condition to that poor rapacious craving consciousness.
«Priscilla said she'd do anything you wanted.»
Electric shocks. They batter the brain cage. Like hitting the wireless, they say, to make it go. I must pull myself together. Priscilla.
«We must go-into it-« I said.
«Brad, what's the matter?»
«Nothing. Destruction of cells in the brain.»
«Are you ill?»
