"You exaggerate. Staking a five-franc piece--for the good of the house--on the petits chevaux does not make you that, any more than taking a glass of wine makes you a drunkard."
"Why did you make me, why did you let me, do it?"
"I didn't know you felt that way."
"And yet you said you knew me!"
He winched. He had told a falsehood. He did know her--there was the sting. In mischievous mood he had induced her to do the thing which he suspected that she held to be wrong. He had not supposed that she would take it so seriously, especially if she won, being aware that there are persons who condemn gambling when they or those belonging to them lose, but who lean more towards the side of charity when they win. He did not know what to say to her, so he said nothing.
"My father once lost over four hundred pounds on a horse-race. I don't quite know how it was, I was only a child. He was in business at the time. I believe it ruined him, and it nearly broke my mother's heart. I promised her that I would never gamble--and now I have."
He felt that this was one of those women whose moral eye is single--with whom it is better to be frank.
"I confess I felt that you might have scruples on the point; but I thought you would look upon a single stake of a single five-franc piece as a jest. Many American women--and many Englishwomen--who would be horrified if you called them gamblers, go into the rooms at Monte Carlo and lose or win a louis or two just for the sake of the joke."
"For the sake of the joke! Gamble for the sake of the joke! Are you a Jesuit?" The question so took him by surprise that he turned and stared at her. "I have always understood that that is how Jesuits reason--that they try to make out that black is white. I hope--I hope you don't do that?"
He smiled grimly, his thoughts recurring to some of the "deals" in which his success had made him the well-to-do man he was.