There was a dazed look in his eyes, an unhappy lode. His companion, while feigning not to observe him was aware of it, aware too of the grim tightening of the lips, and the repressed passion underlying the unnatural calm of his manner. Guy Matheson did not often betray emotion. He had played and lost steadily for days, and had parted with his money with an indifference that had misled the other as to the resources at his command. The information that he was “cleaned out,” with the corroborative evidence of his stunned expression, came with a shock of surprise to his hearer. That which he had set himself to effect had been accomplished sooner than he had hoped. Luck and superior skill had both been in his favour. The run of luck had been consistent; each day he had been apprehensive of its changing, but it had held steadily; if it held only a little longer, all would be well.
The silence between them grew until it became difficult to break. To venture a trivial remark in the teeth of that grim pause was impossible. The man with the luck smoked reflectively, his eyes on the sand; the man without the luck stared seaward, indifferent in the preoccupation of his thoughts as to what construction his companion was likely to put upon his taciturnity. He was angry with himself, not alone because he had lost everything, but because he could not take his losses philosophically. He had no feeling of splendid adventure, no desire to flick his fingers in the face of fate and laugh. He felt much as he had felt when, a small boy, he had dropped a penny in the slot of an automatic sweet machine that was out of order, and had followed that failure to get a return for his money by dropping another, and this his last, penny in the same unresponsive receptacle. He had on that occasion kicked the offending machine viciously; to have been able to kick something now would have been a relief.
And then abruptly the noise of a bark snapped the silence. The collie was returning along the sands. He turned over on his elbow and swept the beach with his eyes, eyes in which a quickening interest vied with the hard bitterness of resentful anger. He wanted to see the girl again, the girl who had looked at him in wondering amaze that he could find no better pastime than card playing in the sunlight. She had disapproved of his occupation; he had read that in her look; he had also seen the interest that flashed to the surface and drenched the wonder and the disapproval in the dark eyes.
“Here’s that brute of a dog again!” Holman said.
The complaint was allowed to pass without comment; the indolent figure reclining on the sand remained motionless, waiting for the reappearance of the girl. She came into sight presently, still stooping for, and throwing, the stick at intervals; though her response to the dog’s insistence was not so ready as it had been, and her movements were listless, conveying an impression of fatigue. As the girl showed greater indifference for the game, the collie grew more eager. When by its barking it failed to rouse her to greater activity, it pulled at her dress, rushing in and snapping at her skirt excitedly. The man sprawling on the sands looked on. The dog, he decided, was a nuisance. It was boisterous in common with its breed. It scarcely surprised him when from the water’s edge he heard a girl’s scream. In one of its wild rushes the dog had caught her leg in its teeth. With amazing swiftness he was on his feet.
“The brute’s bitten her!” he exclaimed.
“Serve her right,” the other responded, “for letting it make itself a nuisance.”
If he heard the callous remark, Guy Matheson paid no heed to it. In a few rapid strides he reached the girl’s side. Holman looked after him; looked from him to the cards lying where they had been thrown down on the sands; looked from the cards to the two figures by the sea shore; and, reflecting on the unlikelihood of his friend’s return, he slipped the cards into his pocket and left the beach.