Diary of a Drug Fiend

38 The Diary of a Drug Fiend It would be quite useless to attempt to describe the drive to Barley Grange. It lasted barely half a second. It lasted age-less cons. Any doubts that I might have had about myself were stamped under foot by the undeniable facts. I had never driven better in my life. I got out the sea- plane as another man might get out a cigarette from his case. She started like an eagle. With the whirr of the engine came Lou’s soft smooth voice in exquisite antiphony :— “O Thou trembling breast of the night, that gleamest with a rosary of moons! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!” We soared towards the dawn. I went straight to over three thousand. I could hear the beat of my heart. It was one with the beat of the engine. I took the pure unsullied air into my lungs. It was an octave to cocaine; the same invigorating spiritual force expressed in other terms. , The magnificently melodious words of Sieveking sprang into my mind. I repeated them rapturously. It is the beat of the British engine. : “Deep lungfuls! Deep mouthfuls! Deep, deep mental mouthfuls ! ” The wind of our speed abolished all my familiar bodily sensations. The cocaine combined with it to anesthetise them. I was disembodied; an eternal spirit ; a Thing supreme, apart. “Lou, sweetheart! Lou, sweetheart! Lou, Lou, perfect sweetheart | ”’ I must have shouted the refrain. Even amid the roar, I heard her singing back. “OQ Thou summer softness of lips, that glow hot with the scarlet of passion! I adore Thee, Evoe! I adore Thee, I A O!”