218 The Diary of a Drug Fiend.
We rang again and again.
Then Peter got angry and went to see what was wrong.
There isn’t a soul in the place!
It’s perfectly incomprehensible. What could have
happened to them all?
Peter says it’s the Germans. Part of a plot to perse-
cute him for what he did in the war. But I don’t think
so at all.
It says in a book that you have to get rid of every
one if you're going to start the spiritual life.
I expect my spiritual guide put it into their minds
to go, but I’m very doubtful about Cockie. He’s not
ready for any high development. Men are always
revoltingly gross.
Think how they are even about love. I must say
this for Cockie, he’s all right about that. The very
flower of purity—a perfect knight !
Yet we went through a period of a very evil character.
No doubt we had to be purged of all our baser elements.
There is a great sympathy between us at times, and
it is not soiled by any animality.
The only thing is I’m not sure whether it hasn’t been
too great a strain for his mind—the process of purifi-
cation.
He certainly has some very queer ideas. Sometimes
_ I catch him looking at me with some deep suspicion
in his eyes. His mind is harping on the Germans.
He broke out just now into a denunciation of Gretel
Webster as a German spy, and rambled on from that
to say something that I couldn’t properly understand.
But the gist of it was apparently that as Gretel had
introduced us more or less, I was being used to do him
some harm.
Of course ideas like this come to one when one’s
hungry, and all this sprang up owing to the mysterious
disappearance of the servants.
There was nothing for it but for Peter to go to the
inn and have food sent in. But I had the devil’s own
job to get him to do it. His character lacks decision.