He began to tell her of the old school. As if by accident, he gave an account of the circumstances which had led to his leaving.
" My old man was in the city, you know," I heard him say, " and he dropped his pile 'somewhere in Lombard Street' " (he gave a false little laugh), " where he couldn't pick it up, so that was the end of my academic career. He persuaded old Rosenbaum, the banker, that I had a certain talent for finance, and got me a job as private secretary. I really did take to it like a duck to water, and things have gone very well for me ever since. But London isn't the place for men with real ambition. It doesn't afford the scope. It's either Paris or New York for yours sincerely, Elgin Feccles."
I don't know why I didn't believe a word of the tale ; but I didn't. The heroin was working beautifully. I hadn't the slightest inclination to talk to Haide'. In the same way she took no notice of me. She never uttered a word.
Lou was in the same condition. She was apparently listening to what Feccles was saying ; but she made no remark, and preserved a total detachment. The whole scene had not taken three minutes. We reached the Petit Savoyard and took our seats.
The patron appeared to know our friends very well. He welcomed them with even more than the usual French fussiness. We sat down by the window.
The restaurant overhangs the steep slopes of the Montmartre like an eyrie. We ordered supper, Feccles with bright intelligence, the rest of us with utter listlessness. I looked at Lou across the table. I had never seen the woman before in my life. She meant nothing whatever to me. I felt a sudden urgent desire to drink a great deal of water. I couldn't trouble to pour myself out a glass. I couldn't trouble to call the waiter, but I think I must have said the word " water," for Haidde filled my goblet. A smile wriggled across her face. It was the first sign of life she had given. Even the shaking hands had been in the nature of a mechanical reflex rather than of a voluntary action. There was something sinister and disquieting in her gesture. It was as if she had the after-taste in her mouth of some abominable bitterness.
I looked across at Lou. I saw she had changed colour. She looked dreadfully ill. It mattered nothing to me. I had a little amusing cycle of thoughts on the subject. I remembered that I loved her passionately ; at the same time she happened not to exist. My indifference was a source of what I can only call diabolical beatitude.
It occurred to me as a sort of joke that she might have poisoned herself. I was certainly feeling very unwell. That didn't disturb me either.
The waiter brought a bowl of mussels. We ate them dreamily. It was part of the day's work. We enjoyed them because they were enjoyable ; but nothing mattered, not even enjoyment. It struck me as strange that Haide' was simply pretending to cat, but I attributed this to preoccupation.
I felt very much better. Feccles talked easily and lightly about various matters of no importance. Nobody took any notice. He did not appear to observe, for his own part, any lack of politeness.
I certainly was feeling tired. I thought the Chambertin would pick me up, and swallowed a couple of glasses.
Lou kept on looking up at me with a sort of anxiety as if she wanted advice of some kind and didn't know how to ask for it. It was rather amusing.
We started the entre'. Lou got suddenly up from her seat. Feccles, with pretended alarm on his face, followed her hastily. I saw the waiter had hold of her other arm. It was really very amusing. That's always the way with girls-they never know what's enough.
And then I realised with startling suddenness that the case was not confined to the frailer sex. I got out just in time.
If I pass over in silence the events of the next hour, it is not because of the paucity of incident. At its conclusion we were seated once more at the table.
We took little sips of very old Armagnac; it pulled us together. But all the virtue had gone out of us ; we might have been convalescents from some very long and wasting illness.
" There's nothing to be alarmed about," said Feccles, with his curious little laugh. " A trifling indiscretion."
I winced at the word. It took me back to King Lamus. I hated that fellow more than ever. He had begun to obsess me. Confound him !
Lou had confided the whole story to our host, who admitted that he was familiar with these matters.
" You see, my dear Sir Peter," he said, " you can't take H. like you can C., and when you mix your drinks there's the devil to pay. It's like everything else in life ; you've got to find out your limit. It's very dangerous to move about when you're working H. or M., and it's almost certain disaster to eat."
I must admit I felt an awful fool. After all, I had studied medicine pretty seriously ; and this was the second time that a layman had read me the Riot Act.
But Lou nodded cheerfully enough. The brandy had brought back the colour in her cheeks.
" Yes," she said, " I'd heard that all before, but you know it's one thing to hear a thing and another to go through it yourself."
" Experience is the only teacher," admitted Feccles. " All these things are perfectly all right, but the main thing is to go slow at first, and give yourself a chance to learn the ropes."
All this time Haide' had been sitting there like a statue. She exhaled a very curious atmosphere. There was a certain fascination in her complete lack of fascination.
Please excuse this paradoxical way of putting it. I mean that she had all the qualities which normally attract. She had the remains of an astonishing, if bizarre, beauty. She had obviously a vast wealth of experience. She possessed a quiet intensity which should have made her irresistible ; and yet she was absolutely devoid of what we call magnetism. It isn't a scientific word-so much the worse for science. It describes a fact in nature, and one of the most important facts in practical affairs. Everything of human interest, from niusic-ha.11 turns to empires, is run on magnetism and very little else. And science ignores it because it can't be measured by mechanical instruments !
The whole of the woman's vitality was directed to some secret interior shrine of her own soul.
Now she began to speak for the first time. The only subject that interested her in this wide universe was heroin. Her voice was monotonous.
Lou told me later that it reminded her of a dirge droned by Tibetan monks far off across implacable snow.
"It's the only thing there is," she said, in a tone of extraordinary ecstatic detachment. One could divine an infinite unholy joy derived from its own sadness. It was as if she took a morbid pleasure in being something melancholy, something monstrous; there was, in fact, a kind of martyred majesty in her mood.
" You mustn't expect to get the result at once," she went on. " You have to be born into it, married with it, and dead from it before you understand it. Different people are different. But it always takes some months at least before you get rid of that stupid nuisance-life. As long as you have animal passions, you are an animal. How disgusting it is to think of eating and loving and all those appetities, like cattle I Breathing itself would be beastly if one knew one were doing it. How intolerable life would be to people of even mediocre refinement if they were always acutely conscious of the process of digestion."
She gave a little shiver.
" You've read the Mystics, Sir Peter ? " interrupted Feccles.
" I'm afraid not, my dear man," I replied. " Fact is, I haven't read anything much unless I had to."
" I went into it rather for a couple of years," he returned, and then stopped short and flushed.
The thought had apparently called up some very unpleasant memories. He tried to cover his confusion by volubility, and began an elaborate exposition of the tenets of St. Teresa, Miguel de Molinos, and several others celebrated in that line.
" The main point, you see," he recapitulated finally, "is the theory that everything human in us is before all things an obstacle in the way of holiness. That is the secret of the saints, that they renounce everything for one thing which they call the divine purity. It is not simply