ot noticed Adele particularly until now. Under the light she
had a peculiar worn look, the same as she had had before.

The waiter came up to them. "Your turn is next," he hinted to Adele.

"Excuse me a minute," she apologized to the rest of the party. "I must
fix up a bit. No," she added to Constance, "don't come with me."

She returned from the dressing room a different person, and plunged
into the wild dance for which the limited orchestra was already tuning
up. It was a veritable riot of whirl and rhythm. Never before had
Constance seen Adele dance with such abandon. As she executed the wild
mazes of a newly imported dance, she held even the jaded Mayfair
spellbound. And when she concluded with one daring figure and sat down,
flushed and excited, the diners applauded and even shouted approval. It
was an event for even the dance-mad Mayfair.

Constance did not share in the applause. At last she understood. Adele
was a dope fiend, too. She felt it with a sense of pain. Always, she
knew, the fiends tried to get away alone somewhere for a few minutes to
snuff some of their favorite nepenthe. She had heard before of the
cocaine "snuffers" who took a little of the deadly powder, placed it on
the back of the hand, and inhaled it up the nose with a quick intake of
breath. Adele was one. It was not Adele who danced. It was the dope.

Constance was determined to speak.

"You remember that man the girls spoke of?" she began.

"Yes. What of him?" asked Adele with almost a note of defiance.

"Well, I really DO know him," confessed Constance. "He is a detective."

Constance watched her companion curiously, for at the mere word she had
stopped short and faced her. "He is?" she asked quickly. "Then that was
why Dr. Price--"

She managed to suppress the remark and continued her walk home without
another word.

In Adele's little apartment Constance was quick to note that the same
haggard look had returned to her friend's face.

Adele had reached for her pocketbook with a sort of clutching eagerness
and was about to leave the room.

Constance rose. "Why don't you give up the stuff?" she asked earnestly.
"Don't you want to?"

For a moment Adele faced her angrily. Then her real nature seemed
slowly to come to the surface. "Yes," she murmured frankly.

"Then why don't you?" pleaded Constance.

"I haven't the power. There is an indescribable excitement to do
something great, to make a mark. It's soon gone, but while it l