Haide'," he said, with assumed lightness, " lives in open sin with a person named Baruch de Espinosa. I think it's Schopenhauer who calls him 'Der Gottbetrunkene Mann.' "
" The God-intoxicated man," murmured Lou faintly, shooting a sleepy glance at Haide' from beneath her heavy blue-veined eyelids.
" Yes," went on Feccles. " She always carries about one of his books. She goes to sleep on his words ; and when her eyes open, they fall upon the page."
He tapped the table as he spoke. His quick intuition had understood that this strange incident was disquieting to us. He wriggled his thumb and forefinger in the air towards the waiter. The man interpreted the gesture as a request for the bill, and went off to get it.
" Let me drive you and Sir Peter back to your hotel," said our host to Lou. " You've had a rather rough time. I prescribe a good night's rest. You'll find a dose of H. a very useful pick-me-up in the morning, but, for Heaven's sake, don't flog a willing horse. just the minutest sniff, and then coke up gradually when you begin to feel like getting up. By lunch time you'll be feeling like a couple of two-year-olds."
He paid the bill, and we went out. As luck would have it, a taxi had just discharged a party at the door. So we drove home without any trouble.
Lou and I both felt absolutely washed out. She lay upon my breast and held my hand. I felt my strength come back to me when it was called on to support her weakness. And our love grew up anew out of that waste of windy darkness. I felt myself completely purged of all passion ; and in that lustration we were baptised anew and christened with the name of Love.
But although nature had done her best to get rid of the excess of the poison we had taken, there remained a residual effect. We had arrived at the hotel very weary, though as a matter of course we had insisted on Feccles and Haide' coming upstairs for a final drink. But we could hardly keep our eyes open; and as soon as they were gone we made all possible haste to get between the sheets of the twin beds.
I need hardly tell my married friends that on previous nights the process of going to bed had been a very elaborate ritual. But on this occasion it was a mere attempt to break the record for speed. Within five minutes from the departure of Feccles and Haide' the lights were out.
I had imagined that I should drop off to sleep instantly. In fact, it took me some time to realise that I had not done so. I was in an anaesthetic condition which is hard to distinguish from dreaming. In fact, if one started to lay down definitions and explained the differences, the further one got the more obscure would the controversy become.
But my eyes were certainly wide open ; and I was lying on my back, whereas I can never sleep except on my right side, or else, strangely enough, in a sitting position. And the thoughts began to make themselves more conscious as I lay.
You know how thoughts fade out imperceptibly as one goes to sleep. Well, here they were, fading in.
I found myself practically deprived of volition on the physical plane. It was as if it had become impossible for me to wish to move or to speak. I was bathed in an ocean of exceeding calm. My mind was very active, but only so within peculiar limits. I did not seem to be directing the current of my thoughts.
In an ordinary way that fact would have annoyed me intensely. But now it merely made me curious. I tried, as an experiment, to fix my mind on something definite. I was technically able to do so, but at the same time I was aware that I considered the effort not worth making. I noticed, too, that my thoughts were uniformly pleasant.
Curiosity impelled me to fix my mind on ideas which are normally the source of irritation and worry. There was no difficulty in doing so, but the bitterness had disappeared.
I went over incidents in the past which I had almost forgotten by virtue of that singular mental process which protects the mind from annoyance.
I discovered that this loss of memory was apparent, and not real. I recollected every detail with the most minute exactitude. But the most vexatious and humiliating items meant nothing to me any more. I took the same pleasure in recalling them as one has in reading a melancholy tale. I might almost go so far as to say that the unpleasant incidents were preferable to the others.
The reason is, I think, that they leave a deeper mark on the mind. Our souls have invented our minds, so to speak, with the object of registering conscious experiences, and therefore the more deeply an experience is felt the better our minds are carrying out the intention of our souls.
" Forsitan haec olim meminisse juvabit," says AEneas in Virgil when recounting his hardships. (Quaint, by the way I I haven't thought of a Latin tag a dozen times since I left school. Drugs, like old age, strip off one's recent memories, and leave bare one's forgotten ideas.)
The most deeply seated instinct in us is our craving for experience. And that is why the efforts of the Utopians to make life a pleasant routine always arouse subconscious revolt in the spirit of man.
It was the progressive prosperity of the Victorian age that caused the Great War. It was the reaction of the schoolboy against the abolition of adventure.
This curious condition of mind possessed an eternal quality; the stream of thoughts flowed through my brain like a vast irresistible river. I felt that nothing could ever stop it, or even change the current in any important respect. My consciousness had something of the quality of a fixed star proceeding through space by right of its eternal destiny. And the stream carried me on from one set of thoughts to another, slowly and without stress ; it was like a hushed symphony. It included all possible memories, changing imperceptibly from one to another without the faintest hint of jarring.
I was aware of the flight of time, because a church clock struck somewhere far off at immense incalculable intervals. I knew, therefore, that I was making a white night of it. I was aware of dawn through the open French windows on the balcony.
Ages, long ages, later, there was a chime of bells announcing early Mass; and gradually my thought became more slow, more dim ; the active pleasure of thinking became passive. Little by little the shadows crept across my reverie, and then I knew no more.
Chapter VI.
The Glitter on the Snow
I woke to find Lou fully dressed. She was sitting on the edge of my bed. She had taken hold of my hand, and her face was bending over mine like a pallid flower. She saw that I was awake, and her mouth descended upon mine with exquisite tenderness. Her lips were soft and firm ; their kiss revived me into life.
She was extraordinarily pale, and her gestures were limp and languid. I realised that I was utterly exhausted.
"I couldn't sleep at all," she said, "after what seemed a very long time in Which I tried to pull myself together. My mind went running on like mad-I've had a perfectly ripping time-perfectly top-hole ! I simply couldn't get up till I remembered what that man Feccles said about a hair of the dog. So I rolled out of bed and crawled across to the H. and took one little sniff, and sat on the floor till it worked. It's great stuff when you know the ropes. It picked me up in a minute. So I had a bath, and got these things on. I'm still a bit all in. You know we did overdo it, didn't we, Cockie ? "
" You bet," I said feebly. " I'm glad I've got a nurse."
" Right-o," she said, with a queer grin. " It's time for your majesty's medicine."
She
