Sin's visit.
Later she taxed him on the point, but he suffered her inquiry with
imperturbable sangfroid, and she found herself no wiser respecting the
cause of his annoyance. Painful twinges of conscience came during the
ensuing days, when she found herself in her fiance's company, but she
never once seriously contemplated dropping the acquaintance of Mrs.
Sin.
She thought, vaguely, as she had many times thought before, of cutting
adrift from the entire clique, but there was no return of that sincere
emotional desire to reform which she had experienced on the day that
Monte Irvin had taken her hand, in blind trust, and had asked her to
be his wife. Had she analyzed, or been capable of analyzing, her
intentions with regard to the future, she would have learned that
daily they inclined more and more towards compromise. The drug habit
was sapping will and weakening morale, insidiously, imperceptibly. She
was caught in a current of that "sacred river" seen in an opium-trance
by Coleridge, and which ran--
"Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea."
Pyne's big car was at the stage-door on the fateful Saturday night,
for Rita had brought her dressing-case to the theatre, and having
called for Kilfane and Mollie Gretna they were to proceed direct to
Limehouse.
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