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 lasts, I can sing, dance, do anything—and then—every part of my body begins crying for more of the stuff again."
There was no longer any necessity of concealment from Constance. She took a pinch of the stuff, placed it on the back of her wrist and quickly sniffed it. The change in her was magical. From a quivering wretched girl she became a self-confident neurasthenic.
"I don't care," she laughed hollowly now.
"Yes, I know what you are going to tell me. Soon I'll be 'hunting the cocaine bug,' as they call it, imagining that in my skin, under the flesh, are worms crawling, perhaps see them, see the little animals running around and biting me."
She said it with a half-reckless cynicism. "Oh, you don't know. There are two souls in the cocainist—one tortured by the pain of not having the stuff, the other laughing and mocking at the dangers of it. It stimulates. It makes your mind work—without effort, by itself. And it gives such visions of success, makes you feel able to do so much, and to forget. All the girls use it."