Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/330

294 middle, hair which had gone prematurely white on top. So that, to the Englishman, with a bit of Herrick running in his mind, the stranger had the appearance of having thrust his head into Mab's palace, and brought away on it all the cobweb tapestries which adorn her walls.

The young man had a broad and full forehead; wore a pince-nez which did not conceal the vivacious quality of his eyes, and a black beard, short cut and pointed, which did its best to supplement his lack of chin. "Intellectual, witty and humane? compliant as a woman," commented the Englishman, summing up the stranger's characteristics, and he was struck with the young man's hands as he moved them to and fro over the cloth—long-fingered and finely modelled hands. He was struck with their flexibility, with their grace. He found himself looking at them with speculation.

"Faites vos jeux, Messieurs," cried the voice of the croupier, and the players pushed their counters over the dividing line. "Messieurs, vos jeux sont faits? Rien ne va plus."

The bank lost, won, lost again; seemed in for a run of ill-luck. Re-heartened, the players increased their stakes, and Fortune immediately shifted her wheel, and the croupier's impassive rake pushed everything on the table over to the banker. The young man with the pince-nez lost five hundred marks, a thousand, two thousand, in succession. With a steady hand and insouciant air, he doubled his stake every time, but the bank continued to win, and the players and bystanders began to look at him with curiosity. He put down five thousand marks and lost it; he put down ten thousand and saw them raked away.

"Well, that's about cleaned me out," he observed in a casual tone, and got up, to perceive that had he held on for but one more deal he would have recouped all his previous losses. For no sooner

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