Diary of a Drug Fiend

130 The Diary of a Drug Fiend was weak and weary, with a sub-current of irritation and distress. I hardly recognised the rich, full tones that had flooded my heart wher she chanted that superb litany in the “‘ Smoking Dog.” “We spent a couple of days here,’’ she said, at the Museo-Palace Hotel. Since then, we’ve been staying at the Caligula at Capri; and our clothes, our pass- ports, our money, and everything are there.” I couldn’t help being pleased by the way in which she rose to the crisis; her practical good sense, her memory of those details that are so important in business, though the male temperament regards them as a necessary. nuisance. These are the things that one needs in an official muddle. “You don’t know any Italian at all?” asked the consul. ; “Only a few words,” she admitted, “ though, of course, Sir Peter’s knowledge of French and Latin help him to make sense out of the newspapers.” “Well,” said the consul, rising languidly, “as it happens, that’s just the point at issue.” ‘“‘T know the big words,” I said. ‘It’s the particles that bother one.” | “ Perhaps then it will save trouble,” said the consul, “if I offer you a free translation of this paragraph in this morning’s paper.” He reached across, took it from the commissario, and began a fluent even phrasing. “England is always in the van when it comes to romance and adventure. The famous ace, Sir Peter Pendragon, V.C., K.B.E., who recently startled London by his sudden marriage with the leading society beauty, Miss Louise Laleham, is not spending his honeymoon in any of the conventional ways, as might be expected from the gentleman’s bold and adventurous character. He has taken his bride for a season’s guideless climbing on the Jostedal Brae, the largest glacier in Norway.” I could see that the commissario was drilling holes