“Maybe. You see I’m foolish enough to think that one should love the man one marries, and I don’t love this one.”
“I accept the rebuke. Well, my dear girl, don’t make any mistake. At the same time I’d be sorry to lose you just yet. We seem to rub along so nicely together.”
“Do we? Then you don’t want me to marry?”
“Why, certainly. If you find the right man. My dear child, your happiness will always be my first consideration.”
“Do you still want me to go back to Paris?”
“Please yourself about that. I must admit I’m beginning to get so used to you I’d miss you awfully.”
With that he took his hat and went off to the Casino. She was used to his brusque ways, but she looked after him rather anxiously. He seemed to think of nothing now but his hateful roulette. At meal-time he ate abstractedly and over his cigarette he stared thoughtfully at columns of figures. He took little notice of her. She was jealous; jealous of a game of chance, jealous of the wheel.
2.
He was, indeed, becoming more and more engrossed. He spent hours talking to that profound student of roulette, Galloway MacTaggart. One evening he told the big spectacled Scotchman of the time he had so nearly come a cropper.
“Ah! ma lad,” said MacTaggart, “if it’s the simple chances ye want tae play, don’t play the pair and the impair. They’re the maist treacherous o’ the three. The black and red are the maist popular. The colour catches folk’s fancy. But for steady, logical playin’, play the passe and the manque. There’s no many do it, but Ah’ve tested it oot, an’ it’s the maist conseestent o’ the three. I can’t tell ye why, but there ye are.”