“Yes,” murmured Kilfane. “We are all present, Lola. I have had the room prepared. Come, my children, let us enter the poppy portico.” He opened a door and stood aside, waving one thin yellow hand between the first two fingers of which smouldered the drugged cigarette. Led by Mrs. Sin the company filed into an apartment evidently intended for a drawing-room, but which had been hastily transformed into an opium divan. Tables, chairs, and other items of furniture had been stacked against one of the walls and the floor spread with rugs, skins, and numerous silk cushions. A gas fire was alight, but before it had been placed an ornate Japanese screen whereon birds of dazzling plumage hovered amid the leaves of gilded palm trees. In the centre of the room stood a small card-table, and upon it were a large brass tray and an ivory pedestal exquisitely carved in the form of a nude figure having one arm upraised. The figure supported a lamp, the light of which was subdued by a barrel-shaped shade of Chinese workmanship. Mollie Gretna giggled hysterically. “Make yourself comfortable, dear,” she cried to Rita, dropping down upon a heap of cushions stacked in a recess beside the fireplace. “I am going to take off my shoes. The last time, Cyrus, when I woke up my feet were quite numb.” “You should come down to my place,” said Mrs. Sin, setting the leather case on the little card-table beside the lamp. “You have there your own little room and silken sheets to lie in, and it is quiet—so quiet.” “Oh!” cried Mollie Gretna, “I _must_ come! But I daren’t go alone. Will you come with me, dear?” turning to Rita. “I don’t know,” was the reply. “I may not like opium.” “But if you do—and I know you will?” “Why,” said Rita, glancing rapidly at Pyne, “I suppose it would be a novel experience.” “Let me arrange it for you,” came the harsh voice of Mrs. Sin. “Lucy will drive you both down—won’t you, my dear?” The shadowed eyes glanced aside at Sir Lucien Pyne. “Certainly,” he replied. “I am always at the ladies’ service.” Rita Dresden settled herself luxuriously into a nest of silk and fur in another corner of the room, regarding the baronet coquettishly through her half-lowered lashes. “I won’t go unless it is my party, Lucy,” she said. “You must let me pay.” “A detail,” murmured Pyne, crossing and standing beside her.