"It is the smell of money," Mary said to herself.
Just inside the entrance doors, on either side, was a large table round which people sat or stood. Those standing behind the chairs of the seated ones were at least two rows deep, crowded tightly together. Beyond were many other tables, thronged even more densely; and ringed thus with closely packed figures, they were like islands on a shining golden sea, an archipelago of little islands, all of exactly the same size, and placed at equal distances.
Mary, hardly knowing what to expect from Peter's rather vague and disjointed descriptions, had dimly fancied clamour and confusion bursting upon eyes and ears on the instant of entering the gambling-rooms. But the silence of the place was as haunting and mystery-suggesting as the indefinable odour, and more thrilling to the imagination than the loudest noise.
She who had been Sister Rose was horrified to find herself thinking of a cathedral lighted for a midnight mass. Almost, she expected organ music to peal out.
Slowly she moved down the room, past the first tables, and, as she walked, the muffled, characteristic sounds she began to hear seemed but to punctuate and emphasize the silence, like echoes in a cave: a faint rattle of rakes, like the rustle of leaves, and a delicate chink-chink of gold, like the chirping of young birds just awakened by dawn.
A voice at each table as she drew near or passed made some announcement. She caught the words distinctly yet not loudly pronounced: "Faites vos jeux, messieurs.... Rien n'va plus. Onze, noir, impair et manque."
"Onze" was one of the numbers the French couple had decided to play. Mary wondered if it had come at their bidding, and she wished intensely to see what was going on at the tables inside those close circles of women's hats and men's shoulders. But to see, meant to push. She was not bold enough to do that, and kept moving on observantly, hoping always to discover some island less populous than others.
Now she began to pick individuals out of the crowd. The number of types seemed countless. It was as if each country on earth had been called upon to contribute as many as it could spare of unusual and striking, even astonishing, specimens of humanity, on purpose to provide eccentric or ornamental features of this strange, world's variety show.
There were some lovely, and a few singularly beautiful, women from northern and southern lands. Peter had said that one could "tell Americans by their chins," which were firmer and more expressive of energy than other chins, and Englishwomen by their straight noses, which looked as if they had been handed down as precious heirlooms from aristocratic ancestresses. The mellow light gilded many such chins and such noses, and shone into soft dark eyes such as only the Latin races have. Mary fancied she could tell French from Italian women, Spanish from Austrian, Hungarian from Russian or German types. Almost invariably the pretty women and the good-looking men were well dressed. Only the plain and ugly ones seemed not to care for appearances. But there were more plain people than handsome ones; and dowdy forms strove jealously to hide the charming figures, as dark clouds swallow up shining stars. All faces, however, no matter how beautiful or how repulsive, how old or how young, had a strange family likeness in their expression, it seemed to Mary; a tense eagerness, such as before her novitiate she had seen on the faces of Lady MacMillan's guests sometimes when they had settled down seriously to play bridge.
She had expected to see unhappy and wildly excited faces, because, Peter said, people often lost or won fortunes in these rooms in a single night; but no one in this moving crowd looked either very miserable or very radiant. They did not even appear to be greatly excited, yet most of them seemed absorbed, as if they listened for a sound which would mean something of vital importance; or else they had an air of fearing that they had missed the all-essential signal which might never come again.