Diary of a Drug Fiend

92 The Diary of a Drug Fiend Well, you know, I don’t like to be left in the lurch. I had to catch up. I literally shovelled the snow down. I ought to have been paid a shilling an hour by the County Council. The world is full of injustice. However, we certainly didn’t have any time to have questions asked in Parliament. There was Lou almost in tears because she had nothing to wear ; practically no jewellery—the whole idea of being a knight is that when you see a wrong it is your duty to right it. Fortunately, there was no difficulty at the present moment. All we had to do was to drive down to the Rue de la Paix. I certainly almost fell down when I saw all those pearls on her neck. And that cabochon emerald! By George, it did go with her hair! These shop men in Paris are certainly artists. The man saw in a moment what was wrong. There was nothing to match the blue of her dress, so he showed us a sapphire and diamond bracelet and a big marquise ring that went with it in a platinum setting. That cer- tainly made all the difference! And yet he seemed to be very uneasy. He was puzzled; that’s what it was. _ Then his face lightened up. He had got the idea all right. You can always trust these chaps when you strike a really good man. What was missing was something red | I told you about Lou’s mouth; her long, jagged, snaky, scarlet streak always writhing and twisting as if it had a separate life of its own and were perpetually in some delicious kind of torture! The man saw immediately what was necessary. The mouth had to be repeated symbolically. That’s the whole secret of art. So he fished out a snake of pigeon’s blood rubies. My God! it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life, except Lou herself. And you couldn’t look at it without thinking of her mouth, and you couldn’t think of her mouth without wanting to kiss it, and it was up to me to prove to Paris that I had