Diary of a Drug Fiend

230 The Diary of a Drug Fiend and he gloats over the idea. I cannot make him under- stand that I am the woman clothed with the sun. When he gets those ideas, they arouse similar thoughts in me. But they are only thoughts. I am afraid of him. He might shoot me in a mad fit. He has got a target pistol, a very old one with long, thin bullets, and carries it about all the time. He never mentions the Germans now. He talks about a gang of hypnotists that have got hold of him, and put evil thoughts in his mind. He says that if he could shoot one of them it would break the spell. He tells me not to look at him as I do; but I have to be on the watch lest he should attack me. Then he mixes up my hypnotic gaze with ideas of passion. He keeps on repeating :— *“‘ 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!” He takes an acute delight in the intensity of his suffering. He is wildly proud to think that he has been singled out to undergo more atrocious torments than had ever been conceived of before. He sees me as the principal instrument of the torture, and loves me with perverse diabolical lust for that reason, yet the whole thing is a delusion on his part, or else it is a necessary consequence of his changing into the Dragon. It is only natural that there should be strange incidents in a case of that sort, especially as it never happened before. It is wonderful and terrible to be