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348 Nina, crocheting on an endless piece of white wool, glanced at him with alarmed sympathy, and Teresa smiled faintly. Ernesto was never ill-tempered except at cards, but his card-manners were atrocious. Teresa always remembered, when she saw him at play, the phrase of a clever Italian, "Siamo civili mas non civili" No, decidedly, Ernesto was not civilised. The passion to win swept away all his surface civility.

Crayven was undeniably an irritating partner. To-night he was playing his worst; it was clear that his mind was anywhere but on the game. Teresa, from where she sat, a little behind him, glanced now and then at his grave profile, the weary droop of his eyelids. Midway in the last game of the rubber she got up and said good-night to Nina. Ernesto, studying his cards with knitted brows, did not notice her move till the other two men at the table rose; then he protested:

"Oh, don't go now! Wait a few minutes and cut in, Teresa, we're almost done—you take Crayven's place, or mine."

"No, I'm tired—I don't want to play," she said, with a perverse pleasure in Crayven's look of suppressed anger. She knew he had come only in order to walk home with her, but she had not meant that he should ; and now she went away, firmly refusing any escort. It was only a few steps to the hotel. But, in the one lighted street