ension; not because she
ascribed his admiration to her artificial vivacity, but because she
realized the strength of the link subsisting between herself and Sir
Lucien. She liked and respected Irvin, and as a result began to view her
conduct from a new standpoint. His life was so entirely open and free
from reproach while part of her own was dark and secret. She conceived a
desire to be done with that dark and secret life.

This was a shadow-land over which Sir Lucien Pyne presided, and which
must be kept hidden from Monte Irvin; and it was not until she thus
contemplated cutting herself adrift from it all that she perceived
the Gordian knot which bound her to the drug coterie. How far, yet how
smoothly, by all but imperceptible stages she had glided down the stream
since that night when the gold box had lain upon her dressing-table!
Kazmah's drug store in Bond Street had few secrets for her; or so she
believed. She knew that the establishment of the strange, immobile
Egyptian was a source from which drugs could always be obtained; she
knew that the dream-reading business served some double purpose; but she
did not know the identity of Kazmah.

Two of the most insidious drugs familiar to modern pharmacy were wooing
her to slavery, and there was no strong hand to hold her back. Even the
presence of her mother might have offered some slight deterrent at this
stage of Rita's descent, but the girl had quitted her suburban home as
soon as her salary had rendered her sufficiently independent to do so,
and had established herself in a small but elegant flat situated in the
heart of theatreland.

But if she had walked blindly into the clutches of cocaine and veronal,
her subsequent experiments with chandu were prompted by indefensible
curiosity, and a false vanity which urged her to do everything that
was "done" by the ultra-smart and vicious set of which she had become a
member.

Her first introduction to opium-smoking was made under the auspices of
an American comedian then appearing in London, an old devotee of the
poppy, and it took place shortly after Sir Lucien Pyne had proposed
marriage to Rita. This proposal she had not rejected outright; she had
pleaded time for consideration. Monte Irvin was away, and Rita secretly
hoped that on his return he would declare himself. Meanwhile she
indulged in every new craze which became fashionable among her
associates. A chandu party took place at the American's flat in Duke
Stre