Diary of a Drug Fiend

Love under Will 357 exaltation of cocaine, could match that moment. The words were old; but their meaning was marvellously new. There had never been any “1” before, when I thought “I” was I, there had never been any “ you ” before when I thought of Lou as an independent being, and had not realised that she was the necessary com- plement of the human instrument which was doing “my” work. Nor had there been any love before, while love meant nothing but the manifold stupid things that people ordinarily mean by it. Love, as I meant it now, was an affirmation of the inevitable unity between the two impersonal halves of the work. It was the physical embodiment of our spiritual truth. My wife didnot answer. There was no need. Her understanding was perfect. We united with the un- conscious ecstasy of nature. Articulate human language was an offence to our spiritual rapture. Our union destroyed our sense of separateness from the universe of which we were part ; the sun, the sky, the sea, the earth, partook with us of that ineffable sacrament. There was no discontinuity between that first embrace of our true marriage, and the occupation of the afternoon in taking stock of the effects of the laboratory, and making notes of the things we should ask Lala to bring us from London. The sun sank behind the ridge, and far above us from the Refectory came the sonorous beat of the tom-tom which told us that the evening meal was ready. We shut up the house, and ran laughing up the slopes. They no longer tired and daunted us. Half-way to the house, we met the tiny Dionysus, full of importance. He had been deputed to remind us of dinner. Sister Athena (we laughed to think) must have realised that our honeymoon had begun ; and—this time—it was no spasmodic exaltation depending on the transitory excitement of passion, or stimulants, but on the fact of our true spiritual marriage, in which we were essentially united to each other not for the sake of either, but to form one bride whose