Over the Top ! 25
filed up with the red lusts of man! I adore
Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!”
I tingled and shivered as she sang; and then some-
thing, I hardly know what, made me turn and look
into the face of Gretel Webster. She was sitting at my
right; her left hand was beneath the table, and she
was looking at if. I followed her glance.
In the little quadrilateral of the veins whose lower
apex is between the first and middle fingers, was a tiny
heap of sparkling dust. Nothing I had ever seen before
had so attracted me. The sheer bright infinite beauty
of the stuff! I had seen it before of course, often
enough, at the hospital ; but this was quite a different
thing. It was set off by its environment as a diamond
is by its setting. It seemed alive. It sparkled intensely.
It was like nothing else in Nature, unless it be those
feathery crystals, wind-blown, that glisten on the
lips of crevasses.
What followed sticks in my memory as if it were
a conjurer’s trick. I don’t know by what gesture she
constrained me. But her hand slowly rose not quite
to the level of the table; and my face, hot, flushed,
angry and eager, had bent down towards it. It seemed
pure instinct, though I have little doubt now that it
was the result of an unspoken suggestion. I drew the
little heap of powder through my nostrils with one
long breath. I felt even then like a choking man in
a coal mine released at the last moment, filling his
lungs for the first time with oxygen.
I don’t know whether this is a common experience.
I suspect that my medical training and reading, and
hearing people talk, and the effect of all those ghoulish
articles in the newspapers had something to do with it.
On the other hand, we must make a good deal of
allowance, I think, for such an expert as Gretel Webster.
No doubt she was worth her wage to the Boche. No
- doubt she had picked me out for part of ‘‘ Die Rache.”’
I had downed some pretty famous flyers.