"And after?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"No, do not go yet. Sit beside me for a while and watch: it is only Fortune that makes me your enemy. I would willingly have lost to you."
She looked so curious, sitting there with her yellow face, her wrinkles and her innumerable diamonds, that I could only sit and stare.
"I have seen many a desperate boy," continued this extraordinary woman, "sitting beside me in that very chair. Ah, many a young life have I murdered in this way. I am old, you see, very old; older even than you could guess, but I triumph over youth none the less. Sometimes I feel as if I fed on the young lives of others."
She delivered these confidences without a change in her emotionless face, and still I stared fascinated.
"Ah, yes, they sit here for a moment, and then they go—who knows where? You will be going presently, and then I shall lose you for ever, without a thought of what happens to you. Money is my blood: you see its colour in my face. Here they all come, and I suck their blood and fling them aside. They win sometimes; but I can wait. I wait and wait, and they come back here as surely as there is a destiny. They come back, and I win in the end. I always win in the end."
She turned her attention to the game for a moment and then went on:—
"It is a rare drink, this yellow blood: and all the sweeter when it comes from youth. I have had but a drop from you, but I like you nevertheless. Oh, yes, I can pity, my heart is always full of pity as I sit here drinking gold. Your friend is a charming boy, but I like you better: and now you will go. These partings are very cruel, are they not?"
There was not a trace of mockery in her voice, and her eyes were the same as ever. I merely looked up in reply, but she divined my thoughts.