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.