"What is the net amount this time?" he asked then of the recumbent figure, which turned slowly on its back and sat up, staring vacantly out into the purple sea-spaces.
"It's the Spider," he said at last, "and, you see, it's been piled up gradually—heaven knows how—I hadn't a notion. He's been accommodating me from time to time with a few louis, and now he has stuck on his beastly interest—made it run into four figures, and flung it at me, yesterday. And the beast won't wait for my infernal luck to change, as of course it must before long. Threatens to ask the chief to stop it out of my pay."
"And what have you to meet this with?" asked the bearded man, taking and reading the figures on the paper handed to him.
The young man drew a few francs from his pocket. "These, and a longish score at the hotel, where they are beginning to dun me. Watch gone, everything, but a pair of gold sleeve-links. Two horses at home, and a few sticks in barracks, and several bills to pay. So the game's played out."
"It looks dark," the Pole acknowledged, "but there may be a gleam somewhere."
"I've been so unlucky," the young man sighed—"everything against me."
"You've had exactly the luck you deserve in this matter, and much better than you deserve in others."
"Oh, hit a man when he is down! But I shouldn't have gone to the dogs if she'd have stuck to me."
"What girl with any self-respect could stick to you in the company you kept?"
"If you mean that poor woman—a good-hearted creature and more sinned against than sinning—what harm was there in helping her out of a tight place?"