Diary of a Drug Fiend

182 The Diary of a Drug Fiend As she daintily picks, profane With her octopus lips, and the teeth Jagged and black beneath, Pulp and blood from a nail.” I jerked his head back, and fastened my mouth on his. I sucked his breath into my lungs. I wanted to choke him; but there was time enough for that. 1 would torture him a few years longer first. I leapt away from him. He panted heavily. When he got his breath back, he glared at me horribly with the pin-point pupils of his sightless eyes. He began with romantic sadness, changing to demoniac glee. | “She was incarnate love In the hours when I first awoke her. Little by little I found The truth of her, stripped of clothing, Bitter beyond all bound, Leprous beyond all loathing.” We shouted with delight, and fell into a fit of hysterical laughter. We came out of it completely exhausted. I must have slept for a while. | When I woke he was sitting at the table under the yellow gas jet, reading the books he had bought. Somehow, the past had been washed out of us. We found ourselves intent on the idea of stopping H.; and the books didn’t help very much. They were written in a very positive way. The writers quarrelled among themselves like a Peace Conference. 3 But they all agreed on two points: that it was beyond the bounds of human possibility to break off the habit by one’s own efforts. At the best, the hope was pitifully poor. The only chance was a “ cure” in a place of restraint. And they all gave very full details of the horrors and dangers of the process. The physician, they said, must steel his heart against every human