gain in the baronet's pocket.

To analyze the process which thereupon took place in Rita's mind would
be a barren task, since its result was a foregone conclusion. Daring
ambition rather than any merely abstract virtue was the keynote of
her character. She had rebuffed the advances of Sir Lucien as she had
rebuffed others, primarily because her aim in life was set higher than
mere success in light comedy. This she counted but a means to a more
desirable end--a wealthy marriage. To the achievement of such an
alliance the presence of an accepted lover would be an obstacle;
and true love Rita Dresden had never known. Yet, short of this final
sacrifice which some women so lightly made, there were few scruples
which she was not prepared to discard in furtherance of her designs. Her
morality, then, was diplomatic, for the vice of ambition may sometimes
make for virtue.

Rita's vivacious beauty and perfect self-possession on the fateful night
earned her a permanent place in stageland: Rita Dresden became a "star."
She had won a long and hard-fought battle; but in avoiding one master
she had abandoned herself to another.

The triumph of her debut left her strangely exhausted. She dreaded
the coming of the second night almost as keenly as she had dreaded the
ordeal of the first. She struggled, poor victim, and only increased her
terrors. Not until the clock showed her that in twenty minutes she must
make her first entrance did she succumb. But Sir Lucien's gold snuff-box
lay upon her dressing-table--and she was trembling. When at last she
heard the sustained note of the oboe in the orchestra giving the pitch
to the answering violins, she raised the jewelled lid of the box.

So she entered upon the path which leads down to destruction, and
since to conjure with the drug which pharmacists know as methylbenzoyl
ecgonine is to raise the demon Insomnia, ere long she found herself
exploring strange by-paths in quest of sleep.

By the time that she was entrusted with the leading part in The Maid
of the Masque, she herself did not recognize how tenacious was the
hold which this fatal habit had secured upon her. In the company of Sir
Lucien Pyne she met other devotees, and for a time came to regard her
unnatural mode of existence as something inseparable from the Bohemian
life. To the horrible side of it she was blind.

It was her meeting with Monte Irvin during the run of this successful
play which first awakened a dawning compreh