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.

“I think I agree with Miss Gretna,” she said lightly.  “There is not so much happiness in life that I want to forget the little I have had.”

“Happiness,” murmured Kilfane.  “There is no real happiness.  Happiness is smoke.  Let us smoke.”

“I am curious, but half afraid,” declared Rita.  “I have heard that opium sometimes has no other effect than to make one frightfully ill.”

“Oh, my dear!” cried Miss Gretna, with a foolish giggling laugh, “you will love it!  Such fascinating dreams!  Such delightful adventures!”

“Other drugs,” drawled Sir Lucien, “merely stimulate one’s normal mental activities.  Chandu is a key to another life.  Cocaine, for instance enhances our capacity for work.  It is only a heretic like De Quincey who prostitutes the magic gum to such base purposes.  Chandu is misunderstood in Europe; in Asia it is the companion of the aesthete’s leisure.”

“But surely,” said Rita, “one pipe of opium will not produce all these wonders.”

“Some people never experience them at all,” interrupted Miss Gretna.  “The great idea is to get into a comfortable position, and just resign yourself—­let yourself go.  Oh, it’s heavenly!”

Cyrus Kilfane turned his dull eyes in Rita’s direction.

“A question of temperament and adaptability,” he murmured.  “De Quincey, Pyne”—­slowly turning towards the baronet—­“is didactic, of course; but his Confessions may be true, nevertheless.  He forgets, you see, that he possessed an unusual constitution, and the temperament of a Norwegian herring.  He forgets, too, that he was a laudanum drinker, not an opium smoker.  Now you, my daughter”—­the lustreless eyes again sought Rita’s flushed face—­“are vivid—­intensely vital.  If you can succeed in resigning yourself to the hypnosis induced your experiences will be delightful.  Trust your Uncle Cy.”