With all their depreciation of the croupier, it seemed to Sylvia that most of the girls would have been well pleased to change places with Lily. But how was she herself to regard the affair? During those long days of illness, when she had lain hour after hour with her thoughts, to what a failure her life had seemed to be turning, and what a haphazard, harborless course hers had seemed to be. Now she must perhaps jettison the little cargo she carried, or would it be fairer to say that she must decide whether she should disembark it? It was absurd to pretend that Michael would have viewed with anything but dismay the surrender of Lily to such a one as that croupier, and if she made that surrender, she would be violating his trust that counted for so much in her aimless career. Yet was she not attributing to Michael the sentiment he felt before Lily’s betrayal of him? He had only demanded of Sylvia that she should prevent Lily from drifting downward along the dull road of undistinguished ruin. If this fantastic Brazilian wished to marry her, why should he not do so? Then she herself should be alone indeed and, unless a miracle happened, should be lost in the eternal whirl of vagabonds to and fro across the face of the earth.
“They say one must expect to be depressed after yellow fever,” Sylvia reassured herself. “Perhaps this mood won’t last, but, oh, the endlessness of it all! How even one’s brush and comb seem weighed down by an interminable melancholy. As I look round me I can see nothing that doesn’t strike me as hopelessly, drearily, appallingly superfluous. The very soap in its china dish looks wistful. How pathetic the life of a piece of soap is, when one stops to contemplate it. A slow and steady diminution. Oh, I must do something to shake off this intolerable heaviness!”
The simplest and most direct path to energy and action seemed to be an attempt to interview Camacho, and the following evening Sylvia tried to make Lily divulge her address; but she begged not to be disturbed, and Sylvia, seeing that she was utterly absorbed by the play, had to leave her.
“Either I am getting flaccid beyond belief,” she said to herself, “or Lily has acquired an equally incredible determination. I think it’s the latter. It just shows what passion will do even for a Lily. All her life she has remained unmoved, until roulette reveals itself to her and she finds out what she was intended for. Of course I must leave her to her fierce skeleton; he represents the corollary to the passion. Queer thing, the way she always wins. I’m sure they’re cheating, somehow, the two of them. There’s the final link. They’ll go away presently to Europe, and Lily will enjoy the sweetest respectability that exists—the one that is founded on early indiscretion and dishonesty—a paradise preceded by the fall.”
Sylvia waited by the entrance to the roulette-room on the next night until play was finished, watched Lily come out with Camacho, and saw them get into a carriage and drive away immediately. None of the attendants or the other croupiers knew where Camacho lived, or, if they knew, they refused to tell Sylvia. On the fourth evening, therefore, she waited in a carriage by the entrance and ordered her driver to follow the one in which Lily was. She found that Camacho’s apartments were not so far from her own; the next morning she waited at the corner of the street until she saw him come out; then she rang the bell. The negress who opened the door shook her head at the notion of letting Sylvia enter, but the waiting in the sun had irritated her and she pushed past and ran up-stairs. The negress had left the upper door open, and Sylvia was able to enter the flat. Lily was in bed, playing with her jewels as if they were toys.
“Sylvia!” she cried, in alarm. “He’ll kill you if he finds you here. He’s gone to fetch the priest. They’ll be back in a moment. Go away.”
Sylvia said she insisted on speaking to Camacho; she had some good advice to give him.
“But he’s particularly jealous of you. The first evening you spoke to me ... look!” Lily pointed to the ceiling, which was marked like a die with five holes. “He did that when he came home to show what he would do to you.”
“Rubbish!” said Sylvia. “He’ll be like a lamb when we meet. If he hadn’t fired at the ceiling I should have felt much more alarmed for the safety of my head.”
“But, Sylvia,” Lily entreated. “You don’t know what he’s like. Once, when he thought a man nudged me, he came home and tore all the towels to pieces with his teeth. The servant nearly cried when she saw the room in the morning. It was simply covered with bits of towel, and he swallowed one piece and nearly choked. You don’t know what he’s like. I can manage him, but nobody else could.”