had no need of communicating with each other by means of articulate speech. We understood perfectly; we expressed the fact in every subtle harmony of glance and gesture.
The world had stopped suddenly still. We were alone in the night and the silence of things. We belonged to eternity in some indefinable way; and that infinite silence blossoms inscrutably into embrace.
The heroin had begun to take hold. We felt ourselves crowned with colossal calm. We were masters ; we had budded from nothingness into existence I And now, existence slowly compelled us to action. There was a necessity in our own natures which demanded expression and after the first intense inter-penetration of our individualities, we had reached the resultant of all the forces that composed us.
In one sense, it was that our happiness was so huge that we could not bear it ; and we slid imperceptibly into conceding that the ineffable mysteries must be expressed by means of sacramental action.
But all this took place at an immense distance from reality. A concealed chain of interpretation linked the truth with the obvious commonplace fact that this was a good time to go across to Montmartre and make a night of it.
We dressed to go out with, I imagine, the very sort of feeling as a newly made bishop would have the first time he puts on his vestments.
But none of this would have been intelligible to, or suspected by, anybody who had seen us. We laughed and sang and interchanged gay nothings while we dressed.
When we went downstairs, we felt like gods descending upon earth, immeasurably beyond mortality.
With the cocaine, we had noticed that people smiled rather strangely. Our enthusiasm was observed. We even felt a little touch of annoyance at everybody not going at the same pace ; but this was perfectly different. The sense of our superiority to mankind was constantly present. We were dignified beyond all words to express. Our own voices sounded far, far off. We were perfectly convinced that the hotel porter realised that he was receiving the orders of Jupiter and Juno to get a taxi.
We never doubted that the chauffeur knew himself to be the charioteer of the sun.
" This is perfectly wonderful stuff," I said to Lou as we passed the Arc de Triomphe. " I don't know what you meant by saying the stuff didn't have any special effect upon you. Why, you're perfectly gorgeous."
" You bet I am," laughed Lou. " The king's daughter is all-glorious within ; her raiment is of wrought gold, and she thrusts her face out to be kissed, like a comet pushing its way to the sun. Didn't you know I was the king's daughter ? " she smiled, with such seductive sublimity that something in me nearly fainted with delight.
" Hold up, Cockie," she chirped. " It's all right. You're it, and I'm it, and I'm your little wife."
I could have torn the upholstery out of the taxi. I felt myself a giant. Gargantua was a pigmy. I felt the need of smashing something into matchwood, and I was all messed up about it because it was Lou that I wanted to smash, and at the same time she was the most precious and delicate piece of porcelain that ever came out of the Ming dynasty or whatever the beastly period is.
The most fragile, exquisite beauty ! To touch her was to profane her. I had a sudden nauseating sense of the bestiality of marriage.
I had no idea at the time that this sudden revulsion of feeling was due to a mysterious premonition of the physiological effects of heroin in destroying love. Definitely stimulating things like alcohol, hashish and cocaine give free range to Cupid. Their destructive effect on him is simply due to the reaction. One is in debt, so to speak, because one has outrun the constable.
But what I may call the philosophical types of dope, of which morphine and heroin are the principal examples, are directly inimical to active emotion and emotional action. The normal human feelings are transmuted into what seem on the surface their spiritual equivalents. Ordinary good feeling becomes universal benevolence ; a philanthropy which is infinitely tolerant because the moral code has become meaningless for it. A more than Satanic pride swells in one's soul. As Baudelaire says: " Hast thou not sovereign contempt, which makes the soul so kind ? "
As we drove up the Butte Montmartre towards the Sacre' Coeur, we remained completely silent, lost in our calm beatitude. You must understand that we were already excited to the highest point. The effect of the heroin had been to steady us in that state.
Instead of beating passionately up the sky with flaming wings, we were poised aloft in the illimitable ether. We took fresh doses of the dull soft powder now and again. We did so without greed, hurry or even desire. The sensation was of infinite power which could afford infinite deliberation. Will itself seemed to have been abolished. We were going nowhere in particular, simply because it was our nature so to do. Our beatitude became more absolute every moment.
With cocaine, one is indeed master of everything; but everything matters intensely.
With heroin, the feeling of mastery increases to such a point that nothing matters at all. There is not even the disinclination to do what one happens to be doing which keeps the opium smoker inactive. The body is left to itself so perfectly that one is not worried by its natural activities.
Again, despite our consciousness of infinity, we maintained, concurrently, a perfect sense of proportion in respect of ordinary matters.
Chapter V.
A Heroin Heroine
I stopped the taxi in the Place du Tertre. We wanted to walk along the edge of the Butte and let our gaze wander over Paris.
The night was delicious. Nowhere but in Paris does one experience that soft suave hush ; the heat is dry, the air is light, it is quite unlike anything one ever gets in England.
A very gentle breeze, to which our fancy attributed the redolence of the South, streamed up from the Seine. Paris itself was a blur of misty blue ; the Pantheon and the Eiffel Tower leapt from its folds. They seemed like symbols of the history of mankind ; the noble, solid past and the mechanical efficient future.
I leant upon the parapet entranced. Lou's arm was around my neck. We were so still that I could feel her pulses softly beating.
" Great Scott, Pendragon !"
For all its suggestion of surprise, the voice was low and winsome. I looked around.
Had I been asked, I should have said, no doubt, that I should have resented any disturbance ; and here was a sudden, violent, unpleasant disturbance; and it did not disturb me. There was a somewhat tentative smile on the face of the man who had spoken. I recognised him instantly, though I had not seen him since we were at school together. The man's name was Elgin Feccles. He had been in the mathematical sixth when I was in the lower school.
In my third term he had become head prefect ; he had won a scholarship at Oxford-one of the best things going. Then, without a moment's warning, he had disappeared from the school. Very few people knew why, and those who did pretended not to. But he never went to Oxford.
I had only heard of the man once since. It was in the club. His name came up in connection with some vague gossip about some crooked financial affair. I had it in my mind, vaguely enough, that that must have had something to do with the trouble at school. He was not the sort of boy to be expelled for any of the ordinary
