Au Pays de Cocaine 49
cocaine does. The sober continuity of thought is
broken up. One goes off at a tangent, a fresh, fierce,
fantastic tangent, on the slightest &kcuse. One’s sense
of proportion is gone; and despite all the millions of
miles that one cheerily goes out of one’s way, one
never loses sight of one’s goal.
While I have been writing all this, I have never lost
sight for a moment of the fact that I am telling you
about the box and the letter from Gretel.
We met a girl in Paris, half a Red Indian, a lovely
baby with the fascination of a fiend and a fund of the
foulest stories that ever were told. She lived on cocaine.
She was a more or less uneducated girl; and the way
she put it was this: ‘I’m in a long, lovely garden,
with my arms full of parcels, and I keep on dropping
one; and when I stoop to pick it up, I always drop
another, and all the time I am sailing along up the
garden.” ,
So this w4s Gretel’s letter.
“My DariinG Lou,—I could not begin to tell you the
other day how delighted I was to see you My Lady and
with such a splendid man for your husband. I don’t
blame you for getting married in such a hurry; but,
on the other hand, you mustn’t blame your old friends
for not being prophets! So I could not be on hand with
the goods. However, I have lost no time. You know
how poor I am, but I hope you will value the little
present I am sending you, not for its own sake, but as
a token of my deep affection for the loveliest and most
charming girl I know. A word in your ear, my dear
Lou: the inside is sometimes better than the outside.
With my very kindest regards and best wishes to dear
Sir Peter and yourself, though I can’t expect you to
know that I even exist at the present,
“Yours ever devotedly,
“* GRETEL.”
Lou threw the letter across the table to me. For