But perhaps the plate and the festoons might impress the third guest, who completed Arsenio’s party. Godfrey Frost did not, at first sight, seem so much as to notice them, to know that they were there. His eyes were all for Lucinda. Small wonder, indeed! but they did not seek or follow her in frank and honest admiration, nor yet in the chivalrous though sorrowful longing of unsuccessful love. There was avidity in them, but also anger and grudge; rancor struggling with desire. He was not looking amiable, the third guest. He set me wondering what had passed on the Lido that afternoon.
Arsenio sat down with the air of a man who had done a good day’s work and felt justified in enjoying his dinner and his company. He set Lucinda to his right at the little square table, Godfrey to his left, myself opposite. He gave a glance round the three of us.
“Ah, you’re amused,” he said to Lucinda, with his quick reading of faces. “Well, you know my ways by now!” His voice sounded good-humored, free from chagrin or disappointment. “And, after all, it’s my first and last celebration of the bit of luck that Number Twenty-one at last brought me.”
“The first and last bit of luck too, I expect,” she said; but she too was gay and easy.
“Yes, I shall back it no more; its work is done. Not bad champagne, is it, considering? Louis got it somehow. I told you he’d bring luck, Julius! Louis, fill Mr. Frost’s glass!” He sipped at his own, and then went on. “The charm of a long shot, of facing long odds—that’s what I’ve always liked. That’s the thing for us gamblers! And who isn’t a gambler—willingly or malgré lui? He who lives gambles; so does he who dies—except, of course, for the saving rites of the Church.”
“You were a little late with that reservation, Arsenio,” I remarked.
“You heretics are hardly worthy of it at all,” he retorted, smiling. “But, to gamble well, you must gamble whole-heartedly. No balancing of chances, no cutting the loss, no trying to have it both ways. Don’t you agree with me, Frost?”
“I don’t believe that Mr. Frost agrees with you in the least,” Lucinda put in. “He thinks it’s quite possible to have it both ways. Don’t you, Mr. Frost? To win without losing is your idea!”
He gave her a long look, a reluctant sour smile. She was bantering him—over something known to them, only to be conjectured by Arsenio and me; something that had passed on the Lido? She had for him a touch of the detached scornful amusement which Arsenio’s decorations had roused in her, but with a sharper tang in it—more bite to less laughter.
“I’m not a gambler, though I’m not afraid of a business risk,” he answered.