et, and Rita, who had been invited, and who had consented to go with
Sir Lucien Pyne, met there for the first time the woman variously known
as "Lola" and "Mrs. Sin."

CHAPTER XIII. A CHANDU PARTY

From the restaurant at which she had had supper with Sir Lucien, Rita
proceeded to Duke Street. Alighting from Pyne's car at the door, they
went up to the flat of the organizer of the opium party--Mr. Cyrus
Kilfane. One other guest was already present--a slender, fair woman, who
was introduced by the American as Mollie Gretna, but whose weakly pretty
face Rita recognized as that of a notorious society divorcee, foremost
in the van of every new craze, a past-mistress of the smartest vices.

Kilfane had sallow, expressionless features and drooping, light-colored
eyes. His straw-hued hair, brushed back from a sloping brow, hung lankly
down upon his coat-collar. Long familiarity with China's ruling vice and
contact with those who practiced it had brought about that mysterious
physical alteration--apparently reflecting a mental change--so often
to be seen in one who has consorted with Chinamen. Even the light eyes
seemed to have grown slightly oblique; the voice, the unimpassioned
greeting, were those of a son of Cathay. He carried himself with a stoop
and had a queer, shuffling gait.

"Ah, my dear daughter," he murmured in a solemnly facetious manner, "how
glad I am to welcome you to our poppy circle."

He slowly turned his half-closed eyes in Pyne's direction, and slowly
turned them back again.

"Do you seek forgetfulness of old joys?" he asked. "This is my own case
and Pyne's. Or do you, as Mollie does, seek new joys--youth's eternal
quest?"

Rita laughed with a careless abandon which belonged to that part of her
character veiled from the outer world.

"I think I agree with Miss Gretna," she said lightly. "There is not so
much happiness in life that I want to forget the little I have had."

"Happiness," murmured Kilfane. "There is no real happiness. Happiness is
smoke. Let us smoke."

"I am curious, but half afraid," declared Rita. "I have heard that opium
sometimes has no other effect than to make one frightfully ill."

"Oh, my dear!" cried Miss Gretna, with a foolish giggling laugh, "you
will love it! Such fascinating dreams! Such delightful adventures!"

"Other drugs," drawled Sir Lucien, "merely stimulate one's normal mental
activities. Chandu is a key to another life. Cocaine, for instance
enhances our ca