Diary of a Drug Fiend

King Lamus Intervenes 259 was still a faint smell of bitter almond in the air. It reminded me of how the dinner might have ended, and I trembled all over like a man in an ague fit. What was happening in me? Had I suddenly fallen in love with life, or had I simply become aware of the fear of death ? When we reached the fresh air, I knew it was the former. Lamus had made me feel. The effect of the drug had been to kill all feelingin me. My impulse to kill myself had not been so wholly negative’as I had thought. It was a positive craving for what I supposed to be the anzsthesia of death. The pain of life had been too much to endure, and the influence of King Lamus had been to brace me to meet life face to face, whatever it might have in store, and conquer it. I did not fear death any more than I had done in the old days, flying over the lines. I didn’t mind dying at all; but I wanted to die fighting. Lou was talking quite briskly to King Lamus on the steps of the restaurant while the commissionaire called a taxi. And I realised too that I loved her, that she was worth fighting to recover, that I had been a cad to drag her down with me. I understood my jealousy of King Lamus. His colossal strength, even his callousness about women, attracted them. The man himself had made me sit up and match myself against him. I wasn’t going to have Lou see me constantly at a disadvantage. We drove around to the studio. The atmosphere invigorated us. I got an entirely new point of view about Lala. Before, she had seemed to me little more than part of the furniture, but to- night she was the resident spirit of the place. She informed it, gave it a meaning. The intimacy between her and her master was not in any way personal. She was the medium by which his thoughts became per- ceptible.