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August 17.

We are at the Savoy. Cockie has gone to see his lawyer. He is looking awfully bad, poor boy. He feels the disgrace of having been taken in by that Feccles. But how was he to know ?

It was all really my fault. I ought to have had an instinct about it.

I feel rotten myself. London is frightfully hot much hotter than it was in Italy. I want to go and live at Barley Grange. No, I don't ; what I want is to get back to where we were. There's frightfully little H. left. There's plenty of C. ; only one wants so much.

I wonder if this is the right stuff. The effect isn't what it used to be. At first everything went so fast. It doesn't any more.

It makes one's mind very full; drags out the details; but it doesn't make one think and talk and act with that glorious sense of speed. I think the truth is that we've got tired out.

Suppose I suggest to Cockie that we knock off for a week and get our physical strength back and start fresh.

I may as well telephone Gretel and arrange for a really big supply. If we're going to live at Barley Grange, we'll have to be cocaine hogs and lay in a big stock. There wouldn't be any chance of getting it down there ; and besides one must take precautions....

Bother August ! Of course Gretel's out of town-in Switzerland, the butler said. They don't know when she'll be back. I wonder when Parliament meets.

Cockie came back for lunch with a very long face. Mr. Wolfe gave him a good talking-to about money. Well, that's perfectly right. We had been going the pace.

Cockie wanted to take me out and buy me some jewellery to replace what was stolen; but I wouldn't let him, except a new watch and a wedding ring.

I've got a horrid feeling about that. It's frightfully unlucky to lose your wedding ring. I feel as if the new one didn't belong to me at all.

We had a long talk about Gretel being away. We tried one or two places, but they wouldn't give us any. I wish Cockie had taken out his diploma.

The papers are disgusting. It's the silly season, right enough. Every time one picks one up, there's something about cocaine. That old fool Platt is on the war-path. He wants to " arouse public opinion to a sense of the appalling danger which threatens the manhood and womanhood of England."

One paper had a long speech of his reported in full. He says it's the plot of the Germans to get even with us.

Of course, I'm only a woman and all that ; but it sounds to me rather funny.

We went to tea with Mabel Black. Every one was talking about drugs. Every one seemed to want them; yet Lord Landsend had just come back from Germany and he said you could buy it quite easily there, but nobody seemed to want to.

Then is the whole German people in a silent conspiracy to destroy us ? I never took much stock in all those stories about the infernal cunning of the Hun.

We heard a lot about the underground traffic, though, and I think we ought to be able to get it pretty easily....

I don't know what's the matter with us both. It made us a bit better to meet the old crowd, and we thought we'd celebrate.

It didn't come off.

We had a wonderful dinner ; and then a horrible thing happened, the most horrible thing in my life. Cockie wanted to go to a show! You might have hit me on the head with a poker. I don't attract him any more; and I love him so much !

He went to the box office to see about tickets, and while he was gone-this was the really horrible thingI found I was simply telling myself " I love him so much."

Love is dead. And yet that's not true. I do love him with all my heart and soul; and yet, somehow, I can't. I want to be able to love until I get back. Oh, what's the good of talking about it !

I know I love him, and yet I know I can't love any one.

I took a whole lot of cocaine. It dulled what I felt. I was able to fancy I loved him.

We went to the show. It was awfully stupid. I was thinking all the time how I wanted to love, and how I wanted dope, and how I wanted to stop dope so that the dope might do me some good.

I couldn't really feel. It was a dull, blind sense of discomfort. I was awfully nervous, too. I felt as if I were somehow caught in a trap ; as if I had got into the wrong house by mistake and couldn't get out again. I didn't know what might be behind all those doors ; and I was quite alone. Cockie was there; but he couldn't do a thing to help me. I couldn't call to him. The link between us was broken.

And yet apart from all the fear I had for myself, there was an even deeper fear on his account. There is something in me that loves him, something deeper than life ; but it won't talk to me.

I sat through the show like being in a nightmare. I was clinging desperately to him; and he didn't seem to understand me and my need. We were strangers.

I think he was feeling rather good. He talked in a charming, light, familiar way; but every smile was an insult, every caress was a stab.

We got back to the Savoy, utterly worn out and wretched. We kept on taking H. and C. all night ; we couldn't sleep, we talked about the drugs. It was just a long argument about how to take them. We felt we were somehow doing it wrong.

I had been so proud of his medical knowledge, and yet it didn't seem to throw any light.

It seems that in the medical books, they speak of what they call " Drug virginity." The thing was to get it back ; and according to the books the only way to do it is to take nothing for a long time.

He said it was really just the same as any other appetite. If you have a big lunch you can't expect to be hungry at tea-time.

But then, what is one to do in the meanwhile ?

August 18

We lay in bed very late. I didn't seem to miss my sleep ; but I was too weak to get out of bed.

We had to buck ourselves up in the usual way, and manage to get downstairs for lunch.

London is quite empty and terribly dull. We met Mabel Black by accident walking in Bond Street. She is looking frightfully ill. I can see she dopes too hard. Of course, the trouble with her is she hasn't got a man. She has a lot of men round her. She could marry any day she liked.

We talked about it a bit. She hasn't got the energy, she said, and the idea of men disgusts her.

She wears the most wonderful boots. She has a new pair almost every day, and hardly ever puts the same pair on twice. I think she's a little bit crazy.. * *

London seems different somehow. I used to be interested in every funny little detail. I want to get back to myself. Drugs help me to get almost there; but there is always one little corner to turn and they never take one round....

August 19

We got back from Bond Street bored and stupefied. We went off unexpectedly to sleep; and when we woke it was this morning. I can't understand why a long sleep like that doesn't refresh one. We're both absolutely fagged.

Cockie said a meal would put us right, and he rang down for breakfast in bed. But when it came, we couldn't either of us eat it.

I remember what Haide' said about the spiritual life. We were being prepared to take our places in the new order of Humanity. It's perfectly right that one should have to undergo a certain amount of discomfort. You couldn't expect anything else. It's nature's way....

We picked ourselves up with five or six goes of heroin. It's no use taking cocaine unless you're feeling pretty good already....

The supply is really awfully small. Confound this silly holiday habit. It really isn't fair of Gretel to let us down like this.

We went to the cafe' Wisteria. Somebody introduced us to somebody that said he could get all he wanted.

But now there was a new nuisance. The police find it troublesome and dangerous to attend to the crime wave. Besides they're too busy enforcing regulations. England's altogether different since the war. You never know where you are. Nobody takes any interest in politics in the way they used to, and nobody bothers any more about the big ideas.

I was taught about Magna Charta and the liberty of the individual, and freedom slowly broadening down from precedent to precedent, and so on and so forth.

All sorts of stupid interference with the rights of the citizen gets passed under our noses without our knowing what it is. For all I know, it may be a crime to wear a green hat with a pink dress.

Well, it would be a crime ; but I don't think it's the business of the police.

I read in a paper the other day that a committee of people in Philadelphia had decided that a skirt must be not less than seven and a half inches from the ground-or not more. I don't know which and I don't know why. Anyhow, the net result is that the price of cocaine has gone up from a pound an ounce to anything you like to pay. So of course everybody wants it whether they want it or not, and anybody but a member of parliament would know that if you offer a man twenty or thirty times what a thing is worth in itself, he'll go to a lot of trouble to make you want to buy it....

Well, we found this man was a fraud. He tried to sell us packets of snow in the dark. He tried to prevent Cockie examining the stuff by pretending to be afraid of the police.

But as it happened, Cockie's long suit was chemistry. He was the wrong man to try to sell powdered borax to at a guinea a sniff. He told the man he'd rather have Beecham's Pills.

What I love about Cockie is the witty way he talks. But somehow or other, the flashes don't come like they did-not so often, I mean. Besides which, he seems to be making his jokes to himself.

Most of the time, I don't get what he means. He talks to himself a great deal, for another thing. I get a feeling of absolute repulsion.

I don't know why it is. The least thing irritates me absurdly. I think it's because every incident, even the things that are pleasant, distracts my mind from the one thing that matters-how to get a supply and go down to Kent and lay off for a bit and have a really good time like we used to last month. I am sure love would come back if we did, and love's the only thing that counts in this world or the next.

I feel that it's only round the comer; but a miss is as good as a mile. It makes it somehow worse to be so near and yet so far....

A very funny thing has just struck me. There's something in one's mind that prevents one from thinking of the thing one wants to.

It was perfectly silly of us to be hunting round London for dope and getting mixed up with a rotten crowd like we did in Naples. It never struck us till to-night that all we had to do was to go round to King Lamus. He would give us all we needed at the proper price.

Funny, too, it was Cockie that thought of that. I know he hates the man, though he never said so except in an outburst which I knew didn't mean anything....

We went to the studio in a taxi. Curse the luck, he was out ! There was a girl there, a tall, thin woman with a white face like a wedge. We gave several hints; but she didn't rise, and wretched as we were, we didn't want to spoil the market by telling her outright.

Lamus would be there in the morning, she said.

We said we'd be there at eleven o'clock.

We drove back. We had a rotten night economising. We didn't dare tell each other what we really feared: that somehow he might let us down....

I can't sleep. Cockie is lying awake with his eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. He doesn't stir a muscle. It maddens me that he takes no interest in me. But after all, I take no interest in him. I am as restless as the wandering Jew. At the same time, I can't settle down to anything. I keep on scribbling this stuff in my diary. It relieves me somehow to write what I feel.

What is so utterly damnable is that I understand what I am doing. This complaining rambling rubbish is the substitute which has taken the place of love.

What have I done to forfeit love ? I feel as if I had died and got forgotten in some beastly place where there was nothing but hunger and thirst. Nothing means anything any more except dope, and dope itself doesn't really mean anything vital.

August 20

I am so tired, so tired, so tired I...

My premonition was right about Lamus. There was a very unpleasant scene. We were both frightfully wretched when we got there. (I can't get my hands and feet warm, and there's something wrong with my writing).

Peter Pan thought it best to remind him in a jocular way about his remark that we were to come when we needed him, and then introduced the subject of what we needed.

But he took the words brutally out of our mouths.

" You needn't tell me what you need," he said. " The lack is only too obvious."

He said it in a non-conunittal way so that we couldn't take offence; but we knew instinctively he meant brains.

However, Peter stuck to his guns, like the game little devil he is. That's why I love him.

" Oh, yes, heroin," said Lamus; " cocaine. We regret exceedingly to be out of it for the moment."

The brute seemed unconscious of our distress. He gave an imitation of an apologetic shop-walker.

"But let me show you our latest lines on morphine."

Cockie and I looked at each other wanly. Morphine would no doubt be better than nothing. And then, if you please, the beast pulled a review with a blue cover out of a revolving bookcase and read aloud a long poem. His intonation was so dramatic, he gave so vivid a picture that we sat spell-bound. It seemed as if he had long pincers twisted in our entrails, and were wrenching at them. He gave me the verses when he had finished.

"You ought to paste these," he said, "in your Magical Diary."

So I have. I hardly know why. There's a sort of pleasure in torturing oneself. Is that it ?

Thirst !

Not the thirst of the throat

Though that be the wildest and worst Of physical pangs-that smote

Alone to the heart of Christ,

Wringing the one wild cry

"I thirst ! " from His agony,

While the soldiers drank and diced: Not the thirst benign

That calls the worker to wine;

Not the bodily thirst

(Though that be frenzy accurst)

When the mouth is full of sand,

And the eyes are gummed up, and the ears Trick the soul till it hears

Water, water at hand,

When a man will dig his nails

In his breast, and drink the blood

Already that clots and stales

Ere his tongue can tip its flood,

When the sun is a living devil

Vomiting vats of evil,

And the moon and the night but mock The wretch on his barren rock,

And the dome of heaven high-arched Like his mouth is and and parched,

And the caves of his heart high-spanned Are choked with alkali sand !

Not this ! but a thirst uncharted Body and soul alike

Traitors turned black-hearted, Seeking a space to strike

In a victim already attuned To one vast chord of wound Every separate bone

Cold, an incarnate groan

Distilled from the icy sperm Of Hell's implacable worm;

Every drop of the river

Of blood aflame and a-quiver With poison secret and sourWith a sudden twitch at the last Like certain jagged daggers. (With bloodshot eyes dull-glassed The screaming Malay staggers Through his village aghast). So blood wrenches its pain

Sardonic through heart and brain. Every separate nerve

Awake and alert, on a curve Whose asymptote's name is never In a hyperbolic " for ever ! " A bitten and burning snake

Striking its venom within it, As if it might serve to slake The pain for the tithe of a minute.

Awake, for ever awake !

Awake as one never is

While sleep is a possible end,

Awake in the void, the abyss

Whose thirst is an echo of this That martyrs, world without end, (World without end, Amen!) The man that falters and yields For the proverb's month and an hour To the lure of the snow-starred fields Where the opium poppy's aflower.

Only the prick of a needle Charged from a wizard well ! Is this sufficient to wheedle A soul from heaven to hell ? Was man's spirit weaned From fear of its ghosts and gods To fawn at the feet of a fiend ? Is it such terrible odds,-

The heir of ages of wonder, The crown of earth for an hour, The master of tide and thunder Against the juice of a flower ? Ay I in the roar and the rattle Of all the armies of sin,

This is the only battle He never was known to win.

Slave to the thirst-not thirst

As here it is weakly written, Not thirst in the brain black-bitten, In the soul more sorely smitten ! One dare not think of the worst ! Beyond the raging and raving Hell of the physical craving

Lies, in the brain benumbed,

At the end of time and space, An abyss, unmeasured, unplumbedThe haunt of a face !

She it is, she, that found me

In the morphia honeymoon;

With silk and steel she bound me, In her poisonous milk she drowned me, Even now her arms surround me, Stifling me into the swoon

That still-but oh, how rarely !

Comes at the thrust of the needle, Steadily stares and squarely,

Nor needs to fondle and wheedle Her slave agasp for a kiss,

Hers whose horror is his

That knows that viper womb,

Speckled and barred with black

On its rusty amber scales,

Is his tomb

The straining, groaning, rack

On which he wails-he wails !

Her cranial dome is vaulted,

Her mad Mongolian eyes

Aslant with the ecstasies

Of things immune, exalted

Far beyond stars and skies,

Slits of amber and jet

Her snout for the quarry set

Fleshy and heavy and gross,

Bestial, broken across,

And below it her mouth that drips Blood from the lips

That hide the fangs of a snake,

Drips on venomous udders

Mountainous flanks that fret,

And the spirit sickens and shudders At the hint of a worse thing yet.

Olya ! the golden bait

Barbed with infinite pain,

Fatal, fanatical mate

Of a poisoned body and brain ! Olya, the name that leers

Its lecherous longing and knavery, Whispers in crazing ears The secret spell of her slavery.

Horror indeed intense,

Seduction ever intenser,

Swinging the smoke of sense

From the bowl of a smouldering censer! Behind me, behind and above,

She stands, that mirror of love.

Her fingers are supple-jointed ;

Her nails are polished and pointed, And tipped with spurs of gold:

With them she rowels the brain.

Her lust is critical, cold ;

And her Chinese cheeks are pale, As she daintily picks, profane

With her octopus lips, and the teeth jagged and black beneath,

Pulp and blood from a nail.

One swift prick was enough

In days gone by to invoke her

She was incarnate love

In the hours when I first awoke her. Little by little I found

The truth of her, stripped of clothing, Bitter beyond all bound,

Leprous beyond all loathing.

Black, the plague of the pit,

Her pustules visibly fester,

Cancerous kisses that bit

As the asp caressed her.

Dragon of lure and dread, Tiger of fury and lust, The quick in chains to the dead, The slime alive in the dust, Brazen shame like a flame, An orgy of pregnant pollution With hate beyond aim or nameOrgasm, death, dissolution ! Know you now why her eyes So fearfully glaze, beholding Terrors and infamies Like filthy flowers unfolding ? Laughter widowed of ease, Agony barred from sadness, Death defeated of peace, Is she not madness ? She waits for me, lazily leering, As moon goes murdering moon; The moon of her triumph is nearing; She will have me wholly soon.

Who have missed the morphia craving, Cry scorn if I call you brothers, Curl lip at my maniac raving,

Fools, seven times beguiled,

You have not known her ? Well ! There was never a need she smiled To harry you into hell

Morphia is but one

Spark of its secular fire.

She is the single sun

Type of all desire !

All that you would, you are

And that is the crown of a craving.

You are slaves of the wormwood star. Analysed, reason is raving.

Feeling, examined, is Pain.

What heaven were to hope for a doubt of it ! Life is anguish, insane;

And death is-not a way out of it

" Olya," too, reminds me of myself. I have a morbid wish to be an impossible monster of cruelty and wickedness.

Lamus had told me that long ago, He said it was the phantasm which summed up my longing to - " revert to type." La mostalgie de la boue.

Cockie lost all his dignity. He pleaded for just one sniff. We weren't really very bad, but the description of the thirst in that horrible poem had made us feel thirsty.

" My dear man," said Lamus very brutally. " I'm not a dope peddler. You've come to the wrong shop."

Cockie's head was drooping, and his eyes were glassy. But the need of dope drove him desperately to try every dodge.

" Hang it all," he said with a little flash of spirit. You encouraged us to go on,"

" Certainly," admitted Lamus, " and now, I'm encouraging you to stop."

" I thought you believed in do what you like; you're always saying it."

" I beg your pardon," came the sharp retort. - " I never said anything of the kind. I said, 'Do what thou wilt,' and I say it again. But that's a horse of quite a different colour."

" But we need the stuff," pleaded Peter. " We've got to have it. Why did you induce us to take it ?"

"Why," he laughed subtly, "it's my will to want you to do your will."

" Yes, and I want the stuff."

" Acute psychologist as you are, Sir Peter, you have failed to grasp my meaning. I fear I express myself badly. "

Cockie was boiling inwardly, yet he was so weak and faint that he was like a lamb. I myself would have killed Lamus if I had had the means. I felt that he was deliberately torturing us for his own enjoyment.

"Oh, I see," said Cockie, " I forgot what you were. What's your figure ? "

The point blank insult did not even make him smile. He turned to the tall girl who was at the desk, correcting proofs.

" Note the characteristic reaction," he said to her, as if we had been a couple of rabbits that he was vivisecting. " They don't understand my point of view. They misquote my words, after hearing them every time we have met. They misinterpret four words of one syllable, 'Do what thou wilt.' Finally realising their lack of comprehension, they assume at once that I must be one of the filthiest scoundrels unhanged."

He turned back to Cockie with a little bow of apology.

" Do try to get some idea of what I'm saying," he said very earnestly.

I was bursting with hatred, brimming with suspicion, aghast with contempt. Yet he forced me to feel his sincerity. I crushed down the realisation with furious anger.

"I encourage you to take drugs," he went on, " exactly as I encourage you to fly. Drugs claim to be every man's master. "

'Is it such terrible odds

The heir of ages of wonder, The crown of earth for an hour, The master of tide and thunder Against the juice of a flower ? Ay I in the roar and the rattle Of all the armies of sin,

This is the only battle

He never was known to win.'

You children are the flower of the new generation. You have got to fear nothing. You have got to conquer everything. You have got to learn to make use of drugs as your ancestors learnt to make use of lightning. You have got to stop at the word of command, and go on at the word of command according to circumstances."

He paused. The dire need of the drug kept Peter alert. He followed the argument with intense activity.

" Quite," he agreed, " and just at the moment, the word of command is 'go on.'"

The face of King Lamus flowered into a smile of intense amusement; and the girl at the desk shook her thin body as if she were being deliciously tickled.

Intuition told me why. They had heard the argument before.

" Very cleverly put, Sir Peter. It would look well in a broad frame, very plain, of dark mahogany, over the mantelpiece, perhaps."

For some reason or other, the conversation was pulling us together. Though we had had no dope, we both felt very much better. Cockie fired his big gun.

" It's the essence of your teaching, surely, Air. Lamus, that every man should be absolute master of his own destiny."

" Well, well," admitted the Teacher with an exaggerated sigh, " I expected to be beaten in argument.

I always am. But I, too, am the master of mine. 'If Power asks Why, then is Power weakness,' as we read in the Book of the Law; and it's not my destiny to give you any drugs this morning."

" But you're interfering with my Will," protested Cockie, almost vivaciously.

" It would take too long to explain," returned Lamus, " why I think that remark unfair. But to quote the Book of the Law once more, 'Enough of Because, be he damned for a dog.' Instead, let me tell you a story. "

We tactfully expressed eagerness to hear it.

" The greatest mountaineer of his generation, as you know, was the late Oscar Eckenstein."

He went through a rather complicated gesture quite incomprehensible; but it vaguely suggested to me some ceremonial reverence connected with death.

" I had the great good fortune to be adopted by this man; he taught me how to climb; in particular, how to glissade. He made me start down the slope from all kinds of complicated positions ; head first and so on; and I had to let myself slide without attempting to save myself until he gave the word, and then I had to recover myself and finish, either sitting or standing, as he chose, to swerve or to stop ; while he counted five. And he gave me progressively dangerous exercises. Of course, this sounds all rather obvious, but as a matter of fact, he was the only man who had learnt and who taught to glissade in this thorough way."

" The acquired power, however, stood me in very good stead on many occasions. To save an hour may sometimes mean to save one's life, and we could plunge down dangerous slopes where (for example) one might find oneself on a patch of ice when going at high speed if one were not certain of being able to stop in an instant when the peril were perceived. We could descend perhaps three thousand feet in ten minutes where people without that training would have had to go down step by step on the rope, and perhaps found themselves benighted in a hurricane in consequence. "

" But the best of it was this: I was in command of a Himalayan expedition some years ago ; and the coolies were afraid to traverse a snow slope which overhung a terrific cliff. I called on them to watch me, flung myself on the snow head first, swept down like a sack of oats, and sprang to my feet on the very edge of the precipice. "

" There was a great gasp of awed amazement while I walked up to the men. They followed me across the mauvis Pas without a moment's hesitation. They probably thought it was magic or something. No matter what. But at least they felt sure that they could come to no harm by following a man so obviously under the protection of the mountain gods."

Cockie had gone deathly white. He understood with absolute clarity the point of the anecdote. He felt his manhood shamed that he was in the power of this blind black craving. He didn't really believe that Lamus was telling the truth. He thought the man had risked his life to get those coolies across. It seemed impossible that a man could possess such absolute power and confidence. In other words, he judged King Larnus by himself. He knew himself not to be a first-rate air-man. He had flattered himself that he had dared so many dangers. It cut him like a whip that Lamus should despise what people call the heroic attitude ; that he looked upon taking unnecessary risks as mere animal folly. To be ready to take them, yes. " I do not set my life at a pin's fee."

Larnus had no admiration for the cornered rat. His ideal was to make himself completely master of every possible circumstance.

Cockie tried to say something two or three times; but the words wouldn't come. King Lamus went to him and took his hand.

" Drugs are the slope in front of us," he said, " and I'm wily old Eckenstein, and you're ambitious young Lamus. And I say 'stop I' and when you show me that you can stop, when you have picked yourself together and are standing on the slope laughing, I'll show you how to go on."

We knew at the back of our minds that the man was inexorable. We hated him as the weak always hate the strong, and we had to respect and admire him, detesting him all the more for the fact.