"Hold your tongue!" Eve shrilled at him, seeming to care no more than a wounded animal for the astonished stares of passers-by. It was only Dauntrey who made some poor attempt to cloak and screen the squalor of their quarrel. "What I say is true. Everything is your fault. Who gambled away the money I made, slaving in the house, taking boarders and trying to hold my head up? It was for your sake I worked; and now you refuse to do your part, yet you expect me to keep on loving you."
"Oh, don't, don't!" Mary pleaded. "I'll go with him, anywhere you want me to go."
Instantly Eve became calmer. "Will you do the thing if she stands by you?" she asked her husband.
"Yes," he answered, dully.
"Then for heaven's sake start at once, before you change your mind. I'll wait for you here, on a seat. I must sit down or I shall drop."
"Wouldn't you rather go home if—if I ordered you a cab?" Mary suggested. "You will be so cold—so miserable—sitting out of doors in this sharp wind, with clouds of dust blowing."
"Home!" Eve repeated. "We haven't any home. We've had to leave the villa. We couldn't pay the rent. The beast of a landlord ordered us out. Nobody trusts anybody else at Monte Carlo. The tradespeople are after us like wolves. They've taken everything we had worth taking, except the clothes on our backs. Now do you wonder I want him to get what he can out of the Casino? We must be off somewhere, to-night, before these brutes of tradesmen know we're away from the villa for good. They've probably nosed out something by this time."
"Come along, Miss Grant, if you're really willing to see me through this," Dauntrey said, clinging to those bare rocks of conventionality which still rose above the waters of despair.
"Unless," Eve broke in quickly, "you'd rather lend us enough to get us out of the whole scrape? Some day——"
"Oh, cut that, Eve," her husband interposed. "I wouldn't take any more of Miss Grant's money even if she'd give it, for it would be giving, not lending."