"I would not do this for many," he said in German,
"but for you it has no danger. You could stop anything.
You have real will." After a pause he added: "Now we
are happy; we are both happy. Let us dream without
thinking. Let us realize our happiness!..."
The hours passed while we talked, and my hunger was forgotten. I only wanted one thing to complete my happiness--I wanted Kay, I wanted Boyde, and I wanted one figure from across the sea, my brother. Had these three come to join the circle in that dingy consulting-room, my heaven, it seemed to me, would have been made perfect....
The passing of time was not marked. I played the fiddle, and we chanted the old man's favourite passage: "O just, subtle and mighty opium!" ... its full meaning, with the appeal it held, now all explained to me at last. As I laid the instrument down, I saw the white face of the little girl just inside the half-opened door. She caught my eye, ran up to me, and climbed upon my knee.
"Oh, Uncle Diedel," she cried, "how big your eyes are! I do believe Otto has given you some of his Majendie medicine. Are you going to die, too, unless you have it?"
Nothing, it seemed, was hidden from the clear vision that lay in me then; the appalling truth flashed into me on the instant. The little, stunted figure, the old expression in the pallid child-face, the whiteness of the skin, the brilliant eyes, all were due to the same one thing. Did the doctor, her own father, give her the needle too?
It was on this occasion, this night of my first experience with morphine, that I found my letters with the stamps torn off. I reached home, as described, about two in the morning, still in a state of bliss, although the effect of the drug was waning a little then. But there was happiness, affection, forgiveness and charity in my heart, I thought. This describes my feelings of the moment certainly. How they were swept away has been already told. So much for the pseudo-exaltation of the drug! And, while
on this subject, the part played by the drug in this par-*
