He witnesses intrigue, adultery and murder. Personally involving himself he becomes more and more obsessed with the lady Isolda and the trials that her life goes through. .
The intense scenes where he is observing the populace of this previous age are highlighted through an interesting use of the way his emotions are described and depicted through what he learns about the people. This builds up in an emotional Roller Coaster, becoming deeply emotionally obsessed with the magnetic Isolda - He resents the time he must spend in the modern world. This rise and fall of his state of mind could be part of the drugs disruptive influence upon him but throughout Daphne du Maurier keeps the onus fair and square upon the obsessive nature of this past world. He finds the presence of his wife and stepsons a hindrance to his new-found experience. Richard eventually finds emotional refuge with a beautiful woman of the past trapped in a loveless marriage, but when he attempts to intervene on her behalf the results are brutal to himself physically and those around him emotionally.
The horrific dangers are highlighted in no better way than where Magnus, the creator of the drug and university friend of Richard, takes some of the drug and due to his drug-induced state walks in front of a fast moving train. Receiving a savage blow to his head and with fatal injuries he crawls to an old rail side shed and passes away there. There is a subtle suggestion that he didn't feel the injury and that he was deep in his visions. " He wasn't conscious of his movements." The powers that the drug has as seen by Richard are shown clearly as he identifies his friend's body but feels no emotion, as his friend isn't the body "Magnus himself wasn't there. He was still walking in the fields, or looking about him, in great wonder, in some other undiscovered world." .
Bringing this sharp almost perverted twist to the story, through an almost unknown character.
