"Come to bed, Charles," he cried out.
Lovely, who had lost at Ecarté considerably more than he had won at Picket, drew back the curtains for answer. The dawn was in the East.
He blew out the candles one after another, and in the unreal morning twilight, the aftermath of smoke curled like an outworn pleasure into extinction save of a foul odour.
"We have still a grey hour for the dice," said Charles.
"As you will," replied Vernon.
The dice boxes were brought out, and the ivory cubes began to dance; strange fancies assailed Clare as he watched the gamesters; morbid imaginations, caught from the chilly atmosphere, froze his reason, and the rattle of the dice acquired a macabre significance. They clicked like the hoofs of horses on an iron-bound road. Then they were the castanets of a sinister dance. Soon they were the shaken ribs of Death, the king of dancers, and at the end no more than a baby's rattle, insistent, importunate, maddening.
The various faces of the cubes took fantastick likenesses. Two was a patched beauty, leaden-eyed, pallid, pleasure-doomed. Five was a skewbald cat and four a plum cake. Six was a ladder to some evil house. Three was a necklace of jet, one a Pierrot's velvet eye.
Charles was still winning.
The irresponsibleness of the dice annoyed Clare. They tumbled and rolled so gaily and it was mortifying to see a man enslaved by acrobats of ivory. The bodies, too, with their absurd waists were like women whom extravagant stays had driven to vomit sweetmeats.