very, and that, I fear,
is not available."

"What is that?"

He looked again at M. Gaston's eyes with their very dilated pupils.

"Opium!" whispered M. Gaston.

"What! you... you"...

"I acquired the custom in China," replied the Frenchman, his voice
gradually growing stronger; "and for many years, now, I have regarded
opium, as essential to my well-being. Unfortunately business has
detained me in London, and I have been forced to fast for an unusually
long time. My outraged constitution is protesting--that is all."

He shrugged his shoulders and glanced up at his host with an odd smile.

"You have my sympathy," said Sir Brian....

"In Paris," continued the visitor, "I am a member of a select and cozy
little club; near the Boulevard Beaumarchais...."

"I have heard of it," interjected Malpas--"on the Rue St. Claude?"

"That indeed is its situation," replied the other with surprise. "You
know someone who is a member?"

Sir Brian Malpas hesitated for ten seconds or more; then, crossing the
room and reclosing the window, he turned, facing his visitor across the
large room.

"I was a member, myself, during the time that I lived in Paris," he
said, in a hurried manner which did not entirely serve to cover his
confusion.

"My dear Sir Brian! We have at least one taste in common!"

Sir Brian Malpas passed his hand across his brow with a weary gesture
well-known to fellow Members of Parliament, for it often presaged the
abrupt termination of a promising speech.

"I curse the day that I was appointed to Pekin," he said; "for it was in
Pekin that I acquired the opium habit. I thought to make it my servant;
it has made me"...

"What! you would give it up?"

Sir Brian surveyed the speaker with surprise again.

"Do you doubt it?"

"My dear Sir Brian!" cried the Frenchman, now completely restored, "my
real life is lived in the land of the poppies; my other life is but a
shadow! Morbleu! to be an outcast from that garden of bliss is to me
torture excruciating. For the past three months I have regularly met in
my trances."...

Sir Brian shuddered coldly.

"In my explorations of that wonderland," continued the Frenchman, "a
most fascinating Eastern girl. Ah! I cannot describe her; for when, at
a time like this, I seek to conjure up her image,--nom d'un nom! do you
know, I can think of nothing but a serpent!"

"A serpent!"

"A serpent, exactly. Yet, when I actually meet her in the land of the
poppies, she