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.
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