“After all, she’s a jolly, good little sort. She’s made me feel a fool, though. She knew all along I was only gambling for her sake. She might have let me know she wouldn’t take the money. Maybe the whole idea was silly, sentimental.... No, it wasn’t. It was a good sporting proposition. Any other chap would have done it. Besides, it amused me. I got all the reward I wanted in the fun of winning. I made gambling a virtue instead of a vice. I played the knight-errant fighting for the fair lady with chips for a weapon and a roulette table for the field of battle.”
He felt better. He rose and began to flip flat stones over the water.
“She’s got to take the money. It’s hers. I don’t want it. Why won’t she take it? If she had been a princess instead of a poor working girl I could have understood. I don’t mind if she regards it as a loan. There’s no harm in that. An honest loan. Haven’t I been decent and honourable? Haven’t I treated her with every respect? Haven’t I been like a brother to her? Why can’t she accept my aid? Ridiculous, I call it. Girls are funny. Hanged if a chap can understand them....” Having had enough of stone flipping, he lit a cigarette and resumed his seat on the rock.
“Well, what’s to be done? The present state of affairs can’t go on forever. I rather wish it could, though—it’s been so nice having her there. She’s made the place so homey, looked after me so well. Don’t think I’ve ever been so happy. But there! It would be dangerous to go further. We have each our own way to make in the world, and our ways don’t lie together. If she won’t take the money I must do something else to help her. I have to go on helping her. Poor kid! She’s had a devil of a time up to now. I’m sorry if I have hurt her feelings.... I’ll go home and make it up.”
But instead of going home he found himself drawn irresistibly to that great “centre of depravity” (as Mr. Gimp called it), the Casino. He was leaning moodily against one of the columns of the atrium when the doors leading to the Opera House belched forth a weird crowd of Monegasques.
The opera is one of Monte Carlo’s delusions, for though it is widely advertised as one of the attractions of the place, a large proportion of the seats are given away to the natives, those descendants of Sæacen pirates who now plunder the visitor by modern methods. It is as if the company that exploits the Principality, having planted the Casino in their midst and forbidden them to enter the gambling rooms, was trying to make up to them in other ways. The same seats are filled night after night by swarthy folk, barbarously bedecked in flaunting finery. The laundress or lodging-house keeper of the Condamine smirks across the stalls at the butcher or the baker of the upper town, who, in turn, bows deeply to the bureaucrat who lives on the Rock, and is wondering if his dress shirt will last the season without another washing.
As Hugh watched the crowd he heard a voice suddenly address him:
“You’re not going into that monkey-show, are you?”
Looking round he saw Mrs. Belmire seated near him, holding an unlighted cigarette. She wore a gorgeous gown of egg-yolk yellow and pea-pod green. Under a modified Gainsborough hat, her mahogany-tinted hair rippled over her shell-pink ears.
“Give me a light, please! I’m dying for a smoke. Just been in the Rooms and lost fifty louis. Isn’t it silly of me? I’ve seen you playing quite a lot lately. Have you been lucky?”