"Still," suggested the small but clear voice of Greed, "you've got your original five dollars yet to lose. Be a sport. Don't go without turning in a cent to the house. It wouldn't look pretty."
"There's something in that," admitted P. Sybarite again.
Nevertheless, he never quite understood how it was that his feet carried him to the other roulette table, at the end of the salon opposite that at which he had been playing; or how it was that his fingers produced and coolly handed over the board, one of the twenty-dollar notes rather than the modest five he had meant to risk.
"How many?" the new croupier asked pleasantly.
P. Sybarite pulled a doubtful mouth. Five dollars' worth was all he really wanted. What on earth would he do with all the chips twenty dollars would buy? He'd need a bushel measure!
Before he could make up his mind, however, exactly twenty white counters were meted out to him.
"What are these worth?" he demanded incredulously, dropping into a chair.
"One dollar each," he was informed.
"Indeed?" he replied, politely smothering a slight yawn.
But he conceived a new respect for those infatuated men who so recklessly peppered the lay-out with chips—singly and in little piles of five and ten—worth one-hundred cents each!