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.
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