Be of good courage, my dear."
She patted the sallow cheek of the American with her jewelled fingers,
and turned aside, glancing about her.
"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.
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