The dealer ran the cards with monotonous precision, his hands moving like the pieces of a nicely adjusted mechanism. Jeffard's fingers unclosed and he stood staring down at the money in his palm as if the sight of it fascinated him. Then he turned quickly and tossed it across to the banker. "Reds and whites," he said; and the sound of his own voice jarred upon his nerves like the rasping of files in a saw-pit.
Two hours later, he was again standing on the narrow footway in the alley, with the swing doors winging to rest behind him. Two hours of frenzied excitement in the dubious battle with chance, and the day of penitence and its hopeful promise for the future were as if they had not been. Halfway across the street he turned and flung his clenched fist up at the shaded windows, but his tongue clave to his teeth and the curse turned to a groan with a sob at the end of it. And as he went his way, sodden with weariness, the words of a long-forgotten allegory were ringing knell-like in his ears:—
"When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh in dry places seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty and swept and garnished. Then goeth he and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first."
CHAPTER V
It was on the day following the dancing party at the Calmaines' that Constance Elliott arrayed herself in a modest street dress, and ran down to the library where Miss Van Vetter was writing letters.
"You'd better change your mind, Myra, and come along with me. It'll do you good to see how the other half lives," she said coaxingly.
Miss Van Vetter calmly finished her sentence before she replied.
"Thank you, Connie; but I believe not. I know it is the proper fad nowadays to go slumming, but I can't do it; it's a matter of principle with me."