I was waiting now for my delirium.

It came in bits.

I was a child. I was playing on the lawn at home. I was back on
the blazing sea.

I was a schoolboy saying my Ovid; then back once more.

The hen-coop was the Lady Jermyn. I was at Eva Denison's side.
They were marrying us on board. The ship's bell was ringing for us;
a guitar in the background burlesqued the Wedding March under skinny
fingers; the air was poisoned by a million cigarettes, they raised
a pall of smoke above the mastheads, they set fire to the ship;
smoke and flame covered the sea from rim to rim, smoke and flame
filled the universe; the sea dried up, and I was left lying in its
bed, lying in my coffin, with red-hot teeth, because the sun blazed
right above them, and my withered lips were drawn back from them
for ever.

So once more I came back to my living death; too weak now to carry
a finger to the salt water and back to my mouth; too weak to think
of Eva; too weak to pray any longer for the end, to trouble or to
care any more.

Only so tired.

. . . . .

Death has no more terrors for me. I have supped the last horror of