Sylvia was not nearly well enough to reappear at the cabaret, but she went down that evening and was told by the other girls that Lily was at the tables. They were duly shocked at Sylvia’s altered appearance, congratulated her upon having been lucky enough to escape the necessity of shaving her head, and expressed their regrets at not knowing in which clinic she had been staying so that they might have brought her the news of their world. Sylvia lacked the energy to resent their hypocrisy and went to look for Lily, whom she found blazing with jewels at one of the roulette-tables.
There was something so fantastic in Lily’s appearance, thus bedecked, that Sylvia thought for a moment it was a feverish vision such as had haunted her brain at the beginning of the illness. Lily wore suspended from a fine chain round her neck a large diamond, one of those so-called blue diamonds of Brazil that in the moonlight seem like sapphires; her fingers flashed fire; a large brooch of rubies in the likeness of a butterfly winked somberly from her black corsage.
Sylvia made her way through the press of gamblers and touched Lily’s arm. So intent was she upon the tables that she brushed away the hand as if it had been a mosquito.
“Lily! Lily!” Sylvia called, sharply. “Where have you been? Where have you gone?”
At that moment the wheel stopped, and the croupier cried the number and the color in all their combinations. Sylvia was sure that he exchanged glances with Lily and that the gold piece upon the 33 on which he was paying had not been there before the wheel had stopped.
“Lily! Lily! Where have you been?” Sylvia called, again. Lily gathered in her winnings and turned round. It was curious how changed her eyes were; they seemed now merely like two more rich jewels that she was wearing.
“I’m sorry I’ve not been to see you,” she said. “My dear, I’ve won nearly four thousand pounds.”
“You have, have you?” Sylvia said. “Then the sooner you leave Brazil the better.”
Lily threw a swift glance of alarm toward the croupier, a man of almost unnatural thinness, who, while he intoned the invitation to place the stakes, fixed his eyes upon her.
“I can’t leave Brazil,” she said, in a whisper. “I’m living with him.”