Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. Dope by Sax Rohmer (highly recommended books .txt) 📖
- Author: Sax Rohmer
Book online «Dope by Sax Rohmer (highly recommended books .txt) 📖». Author Sax Rohmer
She avoided his ardent gaze, but he moved to the settee beside her and looked into the bewitching face.
“Would it be a great sacrifice to give it all up?” he whispered in a yet lower tone.
Rita shook her head, persistently staring at the tassel.
“For me?”
She gave him a swift, half-frightened glance, pressing her hands against his breast and leaning, back.
“Oh, you don't know me—you don't know me!” she said, the good that was in her touched to life by the man's sincerity. “I—don't deserve it.”
“Rita!” he murmured. “I won't hear you say that!”
“You know nothing about my friends—about my life—”
“I know that I want you for my wife, so that I can protect you from those 'friends.'” He took her in his arms, and she surrendered her lips to him.
“My sweet little girl,” he whispered. “I cannot believe it—yet.”
But the die was cast, and when Rita went to the theatre to dress for the afternoon performance she was pledged to sever her connection with the stage on the termination of her contract. She had luncheon with Monte Irvin, and had listened almost dazedly to his plans for the future. His wealth was even greater than her mother had estimated it to be, and Rita's most cherished dreams were dwarfed by the prospects which Monte Irvin opened up before her. It almost seemed as though he knew and shared her dearest ambitions. She was to winter beneath real Southern palms and to possess a cruising yacht, not one of boards and canvas like that which figured in The Maid of the Masque.
Real Southern palms, she mused guiltily, not those conjured up by opium. That he was solicitous for her health the nature of his schemes revealed. They were to visit Switzerland, and proceed thence to a villa which he owned in Italy. Christmas they would spend in Cairo, explore the Nile to Assouan in a private dahabiyeh, and return home via the Riviera in time to greet the English spring. Rita's delicate, swiftly changing color, her almost ethereal figure, her intense nervous energy he ascribed to a delicate constitution.
She wondered if she would ever dare to tell him the truth; if she ought to tell him.
Pyne came to her dressing-room just before the performance began. He had telephoned at an early hour in the morning, and had learned from her maid that Rita had come home safely and was asleep. Rita had expected him; but the influence of Monte Irvin, from whom she had parted at the stage-door, had prevailed until she actually heard Sir Lucien's voice in the corridor. She had resolutely refrained from looking at the little jewelled casket, engraved “From Lucy to Rita,” which lay in her make-up box upon the table. But the imminence of an ordeal which she dreaded intensely weakened her resolution. She swiftly dipped a little nail-file into the white powder which the box contained, and when Pyne came in she turned to him composedly.
“I am so sorry if I gave you a scare last night, Lucy,” she said. “But I woke up feeling sick, and I had to go out into the fresh air.”
“I was certainly alarmed,” drawled Pyne, whose swarthy face looked more than usually worn in the hard light created by the competition between the dressing-room lamps and the grey wintry daylight which crept through the windows. “Do you feel quite fit again?”
“Quite, thanks.” Rita glanced at a ring which she had not possessed three hours before. “Oh, Lucy—I don't know how to tell you—”
She turned in her chair, looking up wistfully at Pyne, who was standing behind her. His jaw hardened, and his glance sought the white hand upon which the costly gems glittered. He coughed nervously.
“Perhaps”—his drawling manner of speech temporarily deserted him; he spoke jerkily—“perhaps—I can guess.”
She watched him in a pathetic way, and there was a threat of tears in her beautiful eyes; for whatever his earlier intentions may have been, Sir Lucien had proved a staunch friend and, according to his own peculiar code, an honorable lover.
“Is it—Irvin?” he asked jerkily.
Rita nodded, and a tear glistened upon her darkened lashes.
Sir Lucien cleared his throat again, then coolly extended his hand, once more master of his emotions.
“Congratulations, Rita,” he said. “The better man wins. I hope you will be very happy.”
He turned and walked quietly out of the dressing-room.
CHAPTER XVI. LIMEHOUSE
It was on the following Tuesday evening that Mrs. Sin came to the theatre, accompanied by Mollie Gretna. Rita instructed that she should be shown up to the dressing-room. The personality of this singular woman interested her keenly. Mrs. Sin was well known in certain Bohemian quarters, but was always spoken of as one speaks of a pet vice. Not to know Mrs. Sin was to be outside the magic circle which embraced the exclusively smart people who practiced the latest absurdities.
The so-called artistic temperament is compounded of great strength and great weakness; its virtues are whiter than those of ordinary people and its vices blacker. For such a personality Mrs. Sin embodied the idea of secret pleasure. Her bold good looks repelled Rita, but the knowledge in her dark eyes was alluring.
“I arrange for you for Saturday night,” she said. “Cy Kilfane is coming with Mollie, and you bring—”
“Oh,” replied Rita hesitatingly, “I am sorry you have gone to so much trouble.”
“No trouble, my dear,” Mrs. Sin assured her. “Just a little matter of business, and you can pay the bill when it suits you.”
“I am frightfully excited!” cried Mollie Gretna. “It is so nice of you to have asked me to join your party. Of course Cy goes practically every week, but I have always wanted another girl to go with. Oh, I shall be in a perfectly delicious panic when I find myself all among funny Chinamen and things! I think there is something so magnificently wicked-looking about a pigtail—and the very name of Limehouse thrills me to the soul!”
That fixity of purpose which had enabled Rita to avoid the cunning snares set for her feet and to snatch triumph from the very cauldron of shame without burning her fingers availed her not at all in dealing with Mrs. Sin. The image of Monte receded before this appeal to the secret pleasure-loving woman, of insatiable curiosity, primitive and unmoral, who dwells, according to a modern cynic philosopher, within every daughter of Eve touched by the fire of genius.
She accepted the arrangement for Saturday, and before her visitors had left the dressing-room her mind
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