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It was about the end of the third week, I discover from Lou's Diary (I had lost all count of time myself), that he came in one day with a smile of subtle triumph in his eyes.

" I've got on to the ropes," he said, " but I think I ought in fairness to wam you that the Gatto Fritto is a pretty hot place. I wouldn't mind taking you as long as you go in disguise and have a gun in your pocket, but I really can't take it on my conscience to have Lady Pendragon along."

I was so full up with cocaine I hardly knew what he was saying. It was the easiest way out to nod assent and watch the clouds fighting each other to get hold of the sun.

I was betting on that big white elephant on the horizon. There were two black cobras and a purple hippopotamus against him ; but I couldn't help that. With those magnificent tusks he ought to be able to settle their business, and only to look at his legs you could see the old sun hadn't got a dog's chance. I can't see why people haven't the sense to keep still when a fight of this kind is in progress. What's the referee for, anyway ?

It was extremely annoying of Lou to protest in that passionate shrill voice of hers that she was going to the Gatto Fritto, and if she didn't she'd take to keeping cats herself, and fry them, and make me eat them !

I don't know how long she went on. It was perfectly gorgeous to hear her. I knew what it meant just as soon as we could get rid of that swine Feccles.

Hang it all, one doesn't want another man on one's honeymoon !

So there was Feccles turning to me in a sort of limp, helpless protest, imploring me to put my foot down about it.

So I said, " Feccles, old top, you're the right sort. I always liked you at school; and I shall never forget what you've done for me these last thirty or forty years or whatever it is we've been in Capri, and Lloyd George can trust you to nip that blighter you're after, why shouldn't I trust you to see us through this fun at the Gatto Fritto ? "

Lou clapped her hands, screaming with merriment, but Feccles said:

" Now, that's all right. But this is a very serious business. You're not going about it in the right spirit. We've got to go about it very quietly and soberly, and then open up when the word comes Over the top."

We pretended to pull ourselves together to please him, but I couldn't blind my eyes to the fact that I was likely to lose my money, because the white elephant had turned into a quite ordinary Zebu or Brahman cow, or at the best a two-humped or Bactrian dromedary, in any case, an animal entirely unfitted by nature to carry the money of a cautious backer.

Agitated by this circumstance, I was hardly in a condition to realise the nature of the proposals laid before the meeting by Worshipful Brother Feccles, Acting Deputy Grand Secretary General.

But roughly they were to this effect : That we were to lock up all our money and jewellery, except a little small change, as an act of precaution, and Feccles would arrive in due course, with disguises for me and Lou as Neapolitan fisherfolk, and we were to take nothing but a revolver apiece and a little small change, and we were to slip off the terrace of the hotel after dark without any one seeing, and there would be a motor-boat across to Sorrento ; and there would be an automobile, so we could get into Naples at about one o'clock in the morning, and then we were to go to a certain drinking place, the Fauno Ebbrio, and as soon as the coast was clear he would pick us up and take us along to the Gatto Fritto, and we would know for the first time what life was really like.

Well, I call that a perfectly straight, decent, sensible programme. It's the duty of every Englishman to learn as much of foreign affairs as he can without interfering with his business. That sort of knowledge will always come in useful in case of another European War. It was knowing that sort of thing that had put Feccles where he was in the Secret Service, the trusted confident of those mysterious intelligences that watch over the welfare of our beloved country.

Thank you, that will conclude the evening's entertainment.

I will say this for Feccles. He always understood instinctively when he wasn't wanted. So immediately the arrangements were made, he excused himself hastily, because he had to go down to the Villa where his victim was staying, and fix a dictaphone in the room where he was going to have dinner.

So I had Lou all to myself until he came with the disguises the next day in the afternoon. And I wasn't going to waste a minute.

I admit I was pretty sick about the way the white cloud let me down. I'd have gone after the silly old sun myself if I hadn't been a married man.

However, there we were alone, alone for ever, Lou and I in Capri, it was all much too good to be true I Sunlight and moonlight and starlight! They were all in her eyes. And she handed out the cocaine with such a provocative gesture I I knew what it was to be insane. I could understand perfectly well why the silly fools that aren't insane are afraid of being insane. I'd been that way myself when I didn't know any better.

This rotten little race of men measures the world by its own standard. It is lost in the vastness of the Universe, and is consequently afraid of everything that doesn't happen to fit its own limits.

Lou and I had discarded the miserable measures of mankind. That sort of thing is all right for tailors and men of science ; but we had sprung in one leap to be conterminous with the Universe. We were as incommensurable as the ratio of a circle to its diameter. We were as imaginary and unreal from their point of view as the square root of minus one.

We didn't ask humanity to judge us. It was simply a case of mistaken identity to regard us as featherless bipeds at all. We may have looked like human beings to their eyes ; in fact, they sent in bills and things as if we had been human beings.

But I refuse to be responsible for the mistakes of the inferior animals. I humour them to some extent in their delusions, because they're lunatics and ought to be humoured. But it's a long way between that and admitting that their hallucinations have any basis in fact.

I had been in their silly world of sense a million years or so ago, when I was Peter Pendragon.

But why recall the painful past ? Of course, one doesn't come to one's full strength in a minute. Take the case of an eagle. What is it as long as it's in the egg ? Nothing but an egg with possibilities. And the first day it's hatched you don't expect it to fly to Neptune and back. Certainly not !

But every day, in every way, it gets better and better. And if I was ever tempted to flop and remember my base origin as a forked radish, why all I needed was a kiss from Lou, or a sniff of cocaine to put me back in Paradise.

I can't tell you about those next twenty-four hours. Suffice it to say that all world's records were broken and broken again. And we were simply panting like two hungry wolves when Feccles turned up with the disguises and the guns!

He repeated those instructions, and added one word of almost paternal counsel in a very confidential tone.

" You'll excuse me, I know; I'm not suggesting for a moment you're not perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, but you haven't been in these parts before, and you must never forget the quick, violent tempers of these Southern Italians. It's like one of these sudden gusts that the fishermen are so afraid of. It doesn't mean anything in particular; but it's often ugly enough at the moment, and what you have to do is to keep out of any kind of a row. There may be a lot of drunken ruffians in the Fauno Ebbrio. Sit near the door ; and if anybody starts scrapping, slip out quietly and walk up and down till it's over. You don't want to get mixed up with a fuss."

I could see the wisdom of his remarks, although, on the other hand, I was personally spoiling for a fight. The one fly in the apothecary's ointment of the honeymoon, though I didn't notice it, was that something in me missed the excitement of the daily gambling with death to which the war had accustomed me.

The slightest reminder of the wilder passions-a couple of boatmen quarrelling, or even a tourist protesting about some trifle, sent the blood to my head.

I only wanted a legitimate excuse for killing a few hundred people.

But nature is wise and kind, and I was always able to take it out of Lou. The passions of murder and love are inseparably connected in our ancestry. All civilisation has done is to teach us to pretend to idealise them.

The programme went off without the slightest hitch. Our room opened on to a terrace in deep shadow. At this time of year there was hardly any one in the hotel, of course. A little flight of steps at the side of the terrace took us under an arch of twisted vines into the barely more than mule-path that does duty for a road in Capri.

No one took any notice of us. There were only strolling lovers, parties of peasants singing as they walked to the guitar, and two or three tired happy fishermen strolling home from the wine-shop.

We found the motor-boat at the quay, and lay lapsed in delight. It seemed hardly a minute later when we found ourselves in Sorrento couched in a huge roadster. Without a word spoken, we were off at top speed. The beauty of the drive is notorious; and yet

"We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea."

The world had been created afresh for our sakes. It was an ever-changing phantasmagoria of rapturous sounds and sights and scents ; and it all seemed a mere ornamentation for our love, the setting for the jewel of our sparkling passion.

Even the last few miles into Naples, where the road runs through tedious commercialised suburbs, took on a new aspect. The houses were a mere irregular skyline. Somehow they suggested the jagged contour of a score of Debussy.

But all this, exquisite as it was, gripping as it was, was in a way superficial. At the bottom of our hearts there seethed and surged a white hot volcanic lake of molten, of infernal, metal.

We did not know what hideous, what monstrous abominations were in store for us at the Gatto Fritto.

I have set down how the action of the drugs had partially stripped off the recent layers of memory. It had achieved a parallel result much more efficiently on the moral plane. The toil of countless generations of evolution had been undone in a month. We still preserved, to a certain extent, the conventions of decency; but we knew that we did so only from ape-like cunning.

We had reverted to the gorilla. No action of violence and lust but seemed a necessary outlet for our energies !

We said nothing to each other about this. It was, in fact, deeper and darker than could be conveyed by articulate speech.

Man differs from the lower animals indeed, first of all, in this matter of language. The use of language compels one to measure one's thoughts. That is why the great philosophers and mystics, who are dealing with ideas that cannot be expressed in such terms, are constantly compelled to use negative adjectives, or to rebuke the mind by formulating their thoughts in a series of contradictory statements. That is the explanation of the Athanasian Creed. Its clauses puzzle the plain man.

One must oneself be divine to comprehend divinity,

The converse proposition is equally true. The passions of the pit find outlet only in bestial noises.

The automobile stopped at the end of the dirty little street where the Fauno Ebbrio lurks. The motorman pointed to the zig-zag streak of light that issued from it, and cast a sinister gleam on the opposite wall.

A bold, black-haired, short-skirted girl with a gaudy shawl and huge gold ear-rings was standing in the door. What with the long journey and the drugs and other things, we were a little drunk-just enough to realise that it was part of our policy to pretend to be a little more drunk than we were.

We let our heads roll from side to side as we staggered to the door. We sat down at a little table and called for drink. They served us one of those foul Italian imitations of liqueurs that taste like hair-wash.

But instead of nauseating us, it exalted us; we enjoyed it as part of the game. Dressed as low-class Neapolitans, we threw ourselves heartily into the part.

We threw the fiery filth down our throats as if it had been Courvoisier '65. The drink took effect on us with surprising alacrity. It seemed to let loose those swarming caravans of driver ants that eat their way through the jungle of life like a splash of sulphuric acid flung in a woman's face.

There was no clock in the den, and of course we had left our watches at home. We got a little impatient. We couldn't remember whether Feccles had or had not told us how long he was likely to be. The air of the room was stifling. The lowest vagabonds of Naples crowded the place. Some were jabbering like apes; some singing drunkenly to themselves; some shamelessly caressing; some sunk in bestial stupor.

Among the last was a burly brute who somehow fascinated our attention.

We thought ourselves quite safe in speaking English; and for all I know we were talking at the top of our voices. Lou maintained that this particular man was English himself.

He was apparently asleep; but presently he lifted his head from the table, stretched his great arms, and called for a drink, in Italian.

He drained his glass at a gulp, and then came suddenly over to our table and addressed us in English.

We could tell at once from his accent that the man had originally been more or less of a gentleman, but his face and his tone told their own story. He must have been going downhill for many years-reached the bottom long ago, and found it the easiest place to live.

He was aggressively friendly in a brutal way, and warned us that our disguises might be a source of danger; any one could see through them, and the fact of our having adopted them might arouse the quick suspicion of the Neapolitan mind.

He called for drinks, and toasted King and Country with a sort of surly pride in his origin. He reminded me of Kipling's broken-down Englishman.

" Don't you be afraid," he said to Lou. " I won't let you come to any harm. A little peach like you ? No blooming feir! "

I resented the remark with almost insane intensity, To hell with the fellow!

He noticed it at once, and leered with a horrible chuckle.

" All right, mister," he said. " No offence meant," and he threw an arm round Lou's neck, and made a movement to kiss her.

I was on my feet in a second, and swung my right to his jaw. It knocked him off the bench, and he lay flat.

In a moment the uproar began. All my old fighting instincts flashed to the surface. I realised instantly that we were in for the very row that Feccles had so wisely warned us to avoid.

The whole crowd-men and women-were on their feet. They were rushing at us like stampeding cattle. I whipped out my revolver. The wave surged back as a breaker does when it hits a rock.

"Guard my back!" I cried to Lou.

She hardly needed telling. The spirit of the true Englishwoman in a crisis was aflame in her.

Fixing the crowd with my eyes and my barrel, we edged our way to the door. One man took up a glass to throw; but the Padrone had slipped out from behind the bar, and knocked his arm down.

The glass smashed to the floor. The attack on us degenerated into a volley of oaths and shrieks. We found ourselves in the fresh air-and also in the arms of half a dozen police who had run up from both ends of the street.

Two of them strode into the wine-shop. The uproar ceased as if by magic.

And then we found that we were under arrest. We were being questioned in voluble, excited Italian. Neither Lou nor I understood a word that was said to US.

The sergeant came out of the dive. He seemed an intelligent man. He understood at once that we were English.

" Inglese ? " he asked. " Inglese ? " and I forcibly echoed " Inglese, Signore Inglese," as if that settled the whole matter.

English people on the Continent have an illusion that the mere fact of their nationality permits them to do anything soever. And there is a great deal of truth in this, after all, because the inhabitants of Europe have a settled conviction that we are all harmless lunatics. So we are allowed to act in all sorts of ways which they would not tolerate for a moment in any supposedly rational person.

In the present instance, I have little doubt that, if we had been dressed as ourselves, we should have been politely conducted to our hotel or put into an automobile, without any more fuss, perhaps, than a few perfunctory questions intended to impress the sergeant's men with his importance.

But as it was, he shook his head doubtfully.

" Arme vietate," he said solemnly, pointing to the revolvers which were still in our hands.

I tried to explain the affair in broken Italian. Lou did what was really a much more sensible thing by taking the affair as a stupendous joke, and going off into shrieks of hysterical laughter.

But as for me, my blood was up. I wasn't going to stand any nonsense from these damned Italians. Despite the Roman blood that is legitimately the supreme pride of our oldest families, we always somehow instinctively think of the Italian as a nigger.

We don't call them " dagos " and " wops, " as they do in the United States, with the invariable epithet of "dirty " ; but we have the same feeling.

I began to take the high hand with the sergeant and that, of course, was quite sufficient to turn the balance against us.

We found ourselves pinioned. He said in a very short tone that we should have to go to the Commissario.

I had two conflicting impulses. One to shoot the dogs down and get away ; the other to wish, like a lost child, that Feccles would turn up and get us out of the mess.

Unfortunately for either, I had been very capably disarmed, and there was no sign of Feccles.

We were marched to the police station and thrown into separate rooms.

I cannot hope to depict the boiling rage which kept me awake all night. I resented ill-temperedly the attempts of the other men to be sympathetic. I think they recognised instinctively that I had got into trouble through no fault of my own, and were anxious to show kindness in their own rough way to the stranger.

The worst of the whole business was that they had searched us and removed our stand-by, the dear little gold-topped bottle ! I might have got myself into a mood to laugh the whole thing off, as had so often happened before ; and I realised for the first time the dreadful sinking of heart that comes from privation.

It was only a hint of the horror so far. I had enough of the stuff in me to carry me through for a bit. But, even as things were, it was bad enough.

I had a feeling of utter helplessness. I began to repent having repulsed the advances of my fellow prisoners. I approached them and explained that I was a " Signor Inglese " with " molto danaro " ; and if any one could oblige me with a sniff of cocaine, as I explained by gesture, I should be practically grateful.

I was understood immediately. They laughed sympathetically with perfect comprehension of the case. But as it happened, nobody had managed to smuggle anything in. There was nothing for it but to wait for the morning. I lay down on a bench, and found myself the prey of increasingly acute irritation.

The hours passed like the procession of Banquo's heirs before the eyes of Macbeth ; and a voice in me kept saying, " Macbeth hath murdered sleep, Macbeth shall sleep no more ! "

I had an appallingly disquieting sensation of being tracked down by some invisible foe. I was seized with a perfectly unreasonable irritation against Feccles, as if it were his fault, and not my own, that I was in this mess.

Strangely enough, you may think, I never gave a thought to Lou. It mattered nothing to me whether she were suffering or not. My own personal physiological sensations occupied the whole of my mind.

I was taken before the Commissario as soon as he arrived. They seemed to recognise that the case was important.

Lou was already in the office. The Commissario spoke no English, and no interpreter was immediately available. She looked absolutely wretched.

There had been no conveniences for toilet, and in the daylight the disguise was a ridiculous travesty.

Her hair was tousled and dirty; her complexion was sallow, mottled with touches of unwholesome red. Her eyes were bleared and bloodshot. Dark purple rims were round them.

I was extremely angry with her for her unprepossessing appearance. It then occurred to me for the first time that perhaps I myself was not looking like the Prince of Wales on Derby Day.

The commissary was a short, bull-necked individual, evidently sprung from the ranks of the people. He possessed a correspondingly exaggerated sense of his official importance.

He spoke almost without courtesy, and appeared to resent our incapacity to understand his language.

As for myself, the fighting spirit had gone out of me completely. All I could do was to give our names in the tone of voice of a schoolboy who has been summoned by the head master, and to appeal for the "Consule, Inglese."

The commissary's clerk seemed excited when he heard who we were, and spoke to his superior in a rapid undertone. We were asked to write our names.

I thought this was getting out of it rather nicely. I felt sure that the " Sir " would do the trick, and the " V-C., K.B.E." could hardly fail to impress.

I'm not a bit of a snob ; but I really was glad for once to be of some sort of importance.

The clerk ran out of the room with the paper. He came back in a moment, beaming all over, and called the attention of the commissary to one of the morning newspapers, running his finger along the lines with suppressed excitement.

My spirits rose. Evidently some social paragraph had identified us.

The commissary changed his manner at once. His new tone was not exactly sympathetic and friendly, but I put that down to the man's plebeian origin.

He said something about " Consule," and had us conducted to an outer room. The clerk indicated that we were to wait there-no doubt, for the arrival of the consul.

It was not more than half an hour; but it seemed an eternity. Lou and I had nothing to say to each other. What we felt was a blind ache to get away from these wretched people, to get back to the Caligula ; to have a bath and a meal; and above all, to ease our nerves with a good stiff dose of heroin and a few hearty sniffs of cocaine.