“Cheer up, now. You’re not broke, are you? I can lend you a pound or so, if you need it. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
They reached a little park at the angle of two streets, and the gamester threw himself upon a bench. He had ceased to weep, but he looked at Elliott with a tragic face.
“You know little,” he said, sombrely. “You are young and strong, but Satan stands at your back as surely as he does at mine. Pray, therefore, lest you also fall into temptation.”
Elliott could think of nothing to say in reply to this.
“As for me, it is too late. And yet,” throwing his hands up despairingly, “thou knowest, O Lord, if I have not served thee—laboured for thee in pagan lands with all my strength. Wasted, wasted! What was I to strive against the Adversary? I thought that I had begun a new life where all my errors would be forgotten, and now it is crushed—gone—and my child will starve among strangers.”
“Tell me all about it. It’ll make you feel better, and maybe I can help you,” Elliott adjured him, afraid that he would grow hysterical again. “First of all, what’s your name? You said you were a bookkeeper, or something, didn’t you?”
The victim of chance seemed to cast about in his memory. “My name is Eaton,” he announced at last, and stopped.
“Well, and what about your new life and your child? You haven’t gambled them away, have you? Is your family in Hongkong?”
Eaton transferred his gaze blankly to Elliott’s face, and allowed it to remain there for some seconds.
“You seem to be a good man,” he said, finally.