"On the contrary."
"You can work."
De Presle-Vaulx smiled: "I am afraid not! No De Presle-Vaulx has done a stroke of work in three hundred years."
"It's time, then"—Bulstrode was tart—"that you broke the record. Why don't you?" He said as though suddenly illumined—"make me your banker, draw on me for whatever sum you will, and since you have faith in her and are so well supported by the public opinion—bet on Grimace. I believe, with you, that he is sure to win. You would recoup much of your loss here."
De Presle-Vaulx pushed back his chair and exclaimed: "Monsieur!"
"Oh," shrugged Bulstrode, "a woman's caprice, my dear fellow! A foolish little whim of a girl! You can't be expected to mix sport and flirtation to the tune of two or three thousand dollars."
He smiled deceptively.
The young man laughed bitterly:
"So that is something of what you think of me? for I see you are not serious! It's a folly, of course, a sentimental folly," he met Bulstrode's eyes that silently accused him of a like—"but only a man in love knows what sentimental follies are worth! There is"—the young man was suddenly serious, "a sort of prodigality in love only understood by certain temperaments, certain races: it may be degenerate: I suppose it is, and to push it quite to the last phase, is, of course, cowardly, certainly very weak, and men like you, Monsieur, will deem it so."
"You mean—?" and now Bulstrode's tone urged him to make himself clear.