"I thought of his words as I stepped softly into the house: 'My only chance of saving my wife and child from beggary.' It was true. It was a duty I owed to them to continue to play and win back the fortune I had lost. It was not my money; it was theirs. I was their only dependence. Yes, they should not say in the future that I had ruined their lives. Luck must change; it had commenced to smile upon me. There entered into my soul that night, Rathbeal, the spirit of greed. I had been too careless hitherto, too unmindful as to whether I won or lost. Hereafter I would be more careful; I would be cunning, as the men I played with were. I would invent a system which would break them and every man I played with. Tired as I was, I sat down and began to calculate chances. A newspaper was on the table, and when I had jotted down some columns of figures, and, aided by my recollection of certain bets I had made a night or two before, proved that had I played wisely I ought to have won instead of lost, I took up the newspaper, and carelessly ran my eyes down its columns. They stopped at an account of an Englishman's marvelous winnings at Monte Carlo--forty thousand pounds in three days. I pondered over it. If he, why not I? I would go and get my money back there. Sometimes in the haunts I frequented money ran short; men, winning, would leave with their gains, and there was no one left to play with except the losers, and I knew from experience how desperate that chance was. At Monte Carlo there was unlimited money. You could continue playing as long as you liked, and go away with your winnings in your pockets in hard cash. Witness this Englishman with his forty thousand pounds in three days. But it would be as well to take a large sum of money with me. I had over three thousand pounds; I would make it into ten here, and then would go to Monte Carlo to wrest back my fortune. My mind made up, I crept to my bedroom. My wife was there, sleeping as I thought. In an adjoining room slept my little girl, Clair. Standing at the bedside of my wife I observed--shame upon me! for the first time with any consciousness that I was the cause of the change--how white and thin she had become. The sight of her wan face, and of her lovely lashes still moist with the tears she had shed, cut me like a knife. I did not dare to kiss her; I feared that she would awake and see my face, for I had looked at it in the glass, and was shocked at my haggard appearance. I stepped softly into the adjoining room where our little Clair was sleeping. She was rosy with health and young life, her red lips parted, showing her pearly teeth, her hair in clustering curls about her brow. Her I did not fear that I should awake, her slumbers were so profound, and I stooped and kissed her.
"'Robert!' said my wife.
"She had been awake when I entered her room, but had not opened her eyes lest she should offend me. Hearing me go into our child's bedroom, she had risen quietly and followed me.
"'Lucy!' I replied, my hands upon her shoulders.
"She fell into my arms, weeping, but no sound escaped her. Clair slept and must not be disturbed.
"I drew her into our bedroom, and closed the door upon Clair.
"'What is the matter, Lucy?' I asked. 'Are you not well?'
"She lifted her wet eyes with a sad wonder in them.
"'Did you not know, Robert?'
"'Know! What?'