"We must take that train," said Aldo, getting up and rapping his saucer for the waiter.
"Oh no!" said Nancy. "Please not! Let us stay here and be happy."
"Stay here and be happy," said Anne-Marie, with a bewitching smile.
They stayed.
V
Aldo repaid the viatique and went into the gambling-rooms with Nancy. The proprietress of the hotel got them a bonne from Vintimille, who walked up and down in the gardens with Anne-Marie, and carried the doll. She cost nothing—only fifty francs a month! They arranged to take pension at the hotel. That also cost nothing—twelve francs a day each. They took drives that cost nothing—sixteen francs to La Turbie, twenty francs to Cap Martin. Nothing cost anything. Ten minutes at the tables, and Nancy had won enough to pay everything for a month.
She sent a cloak to her mother, which Valeria vowed was much too beautiful to wear. She sent presents to Aunt Carlotta and Zio Giacomo, to Adèle and to Nino, to Carlo and to Clarissa. And she remembered a man with no legs, who sat in a little cart on the Corso in Milan, and she sent her mother one hundred francs to give him. Anne-Marie was dressed in a white corded silk coat, and a white-plumed hat. The bonne had a large Scotch bow with streamers.
This lasted ten days. On the eleventh day it was ended. Nancy played gaily, and lost. She played carefully, and lost. She played tremblingly, and lost. She played recklessly, and lost. Aldo, who did not trust his own luck, followed her from table to table, saying: "Be careful!... Don't!... Do!... Why did you? Why didn't you? I told you so!" And at each table la guigne was waiting for them, pushing Nancy's hand in the wrong direction, whispering the wrong numbers in her ear. Ten times they made up their minds to stop, and ten times they decided to try just once more. "We have about nine thousand francs left. With that we are paupers for the rest of our lives. With luck we might recoup."
This lasted two days. On the third day they had one thousand and eighty francs left. "Play the eighty," said Aldo, "and we will keep the thousand." They lost the eighty, and then four hundred francs more. "What is the good of six hundred francs," said Aldo, and they played on.
Their last two louis Aldo threw on a transversale. They won. "Let us leave it all on," said Aldo. They won again.