"I thought you scarcely knew her," Dick caught him up, jealously.
"You are right. I—scarcely know her. But one has intuitions sometimes. I must have had one then. So—she is losing? I heard she had wonderful luck."
"She has had, up till now. Seemed as if she couldn't lose. Christmas night, too! Isn't it a shame?" And Dick was off, hatless, in evening dress without an overcoat. Vanno stood still in front of the Sporting Club for a moment, watching the slim boyish figure go striding up the hill. A liveried porter, seeing the Prince at the foot of the steps, obsequiously opened the door, but Vanno made a sign that he did not wish to enter. As soon as Dick had disappeared, Vanno followed him.
As he went seldom to the Casino, he had not taken a subscription to the newest rooms, or Cercle Privé, where the price of admission is a hundred francs. These rooms are for ardent gamblers who dislike playing in a crowd, and Vanno, who had not felt inclined to play at all, scarcely remembered their existence. Now he bought a ticket, however, and having written his name upon it, followed Carleton at a little distance, to a door at the far end of the trente et quarante rooms. His heart was beating heavily, for in a few minutes he would perhaps know to whom Mary had gone when she left the Hôtel de Paris.
XIX
Even the new rooms were crowded, and preoccupied as he was, it struck Vanno oddly, as it always did strike him anew in the Casino, to hear every one who passed talking of the all-absorbing game. They were obsessed by it, and threw questions to each other, which elsewhere would have meant nothing, or some very different thing; but here no explanations were needed. "Doing any good?" asked a pallid young man with a twitching face, like that of a galvanized corpse, as he met a weary-eyed woman in mourning, whose bare hands glittered with rings. "No," she answered peevishly. "You never saw such tables—all running to intermittences. Nobody can do anything, except the old man who lives on two-one." Then the pair began speaking of Miss Grant, for her name was common property. She was one of the celebrities of the season.
Vanno went on, pausing at each table in the immense Empire room, whose pale green walls glittered with Buonaparte's golden bees; and everywhere he heard the same questions: "How are you doing? Tables treating you well?" Or, "Have you seen Miss Grant? She's simply throwing away money to-night. I'm afraid her luck's out."
There was something ominous and fatal in these words, repeated again and again, with variations. "Poor Miss Grant! Her luck is out." All these gamblers discussing her affairs, commenting, criticising, bewailing the end of her long run of luck. The idea came to Vanno that it was like a chanting chorus in a Greek tragedy; but he thrust the thought out of his mind with violence. He could not bear to associate Mary with tragedy. She was not made for a life and a place like this, where pain and passion and heartburning lie in sharp contrast of shadow side by side with sunshine and flowers. Vanno would have liked to spirit her away out of this garden of painted lilies, to a sweet, old-fashioned garden where pure white Madonna lilies lined the quiet paths. If only she had listened to him last night, how different might have been her Christmas day and his!
Presently he saw Dick Carleton, standing on the outer edge of a crowd which had collected round one of the tables farthest from the entrance. He was peering over people's heads, frowning, his hands deep in his pockets. Then Vanno knew that he need look no farther for Mary.