Diary of a Drug Fiend

Au Pays de Cocaine 51 She played a thousand exquisite crazy parts. I have very little imagination, my brain runs entirely to analysis; but I revel in playing a part that is devised for me. I don’t know how many times during that one dinner I turned from a civilised husband in Bond Street pyjamas into a raging mad- man. It was only after the waiters had left us with the coffee and liqueurs—which we drank like water without being affected—that Lou suddenly threw off her glittering garment. She stood in the middle of the room, and drank a champagne glass half -full of liqueur brandy. The entrancing boldness of her gesture started me screaming inwardly. I jumped up like a crouching tiger that suddenly sees a stag. Lou was giggling all over with irrepressible excite- ment. I know “ giggling all over” isn’t English; but I can’t express it any other way. She checked my rush as if she had been playing full back in an International Rugger match. “Get the scissors,’ she whispered. I understood in a second what she meant. It was perfectly true—we had been playing it a bit on the heavy side with that snow. I think it must have been about five sniffs. If you’re curious, all you have to do is to go back and count it up—to get me to ten thousand feet above the poor old Straits of Dover, God bless them! But it was adding up like the price of the nails in the horse’s shoes that my father used to think funny when I was a kid. You know what I mean—Martin- gale principle and all that sort of thing. We certainly had been punishing the snow. Five sniffs! it wasn’t much in our young lives after a fortnight. Gwendolen Otter says :— ‘“‘ Heart of my heart, in the pale moonlight, Why should we wait till to-morrow night ? ”