He had come to love their big bright room. It was a refuge, a retreat from the fever and fret of the tables. Here was reality, the simple things that mattered; there, a false splendour, a theatrical pretentiousness. Margot considered his growing fondness for home a victory for her, and increased her efforts to make it attractive. She bought many little furnishings, so that the living part became extremely comfortable. But behind the big green curtain their sleeping arrangements remained unchanged. The small grey curtain divided his part from hers. This curtain seemed to him to have a definite significance. It was the symbol of his honour. It was the frailest of barriers, yet by the expression of his will it had become more solid than a sheet of steel. It seemed curious at night to think that she was so close. He often heard her breathing. Perhaps she was his for the taking. But then she trusted him. He would open his eyes and look at the grey curtain with a certain grim exultation. Good job it was grey. Maybe if it had been orange or crimson, or some colour that appealed to the senses, he might have been tempted to tear it aside.... But grey had a sobering effect.
Not that he would have yielded to temptation. He was not that sort, he told himself. If any such intention had ventured into his mind, he would have stamped on it as he would on a snake. He had pride and strength. He was clean-minded, cool-blooded. He was equal to the situation he had created. Yet it was oddly pleasant to have her so close to him. What did she think? he sometimes wondered. She, too, accepted the situation and played the game as honourably as he. They were like brother and sister.
He had to admit that every day she was growing more attractive. As if to please him she had taken to dressing her hair in the English fashion; parting it over the forehead, and massing it in a thick pleat at the nape of her neck. The slight hollowing of her cheeks and the sweetness of her mouth reminded him of Rossetti’s women. She did not have much colouring; her skin was like ivory, and the faint pink of her cheeks that of a sea shell. He made a good many sketches of her; and told himself that some day he would paint her portrait.
But, for the time being, the Goddess Roulette claimed him as her own. She brooked no rival. There in the gaiety and the golden sunshine, he thought roulette, dreamed roulette, lived roulette. He was a worshipper among a host of worshippers, their temple the Casino; and few worshippers at a sacred shrine are so devoted.
One night he had a dream.
The vast hollow of the sky seemed to be the bowl of a mighty wheel. The ball rolled with the long menace of thunder and shot into its slot like a lightning stab. Beneath the shadow of this sinister wheel, the air was grey with fluttering bank-notes, the earth was like an ant-heap of fevered, frenzied men and women. As they leaped at the money it nearly always evaded them. With each leap they grew more feeble. Then he noticed that the ground beneath them was a quagmire, into which they were sinking. Their struggles plunged them deeper and deeper into the ooze, until they disappeared from sight. But no sooner had they gone than others took their place. They, too, leaped and clutched at the elusive fortune, only to sink in turn. And over them the great shadowy wheel rumbled and flashed, taking the place of God and the stars.... It was all so vivid that he awoke shuddering and crying aloud: “The wheel! The wheel!”
But no dream could damp his ardour, nor cloud his happiness. He was superbly happy. He told himself it was because of the beauty and charm of the place. Monte Carlo in its setting of primitive grandeur, glutted with luxury, and gorged with light; man’s insolent triumph over nature; a cocotte of price poised amid the eternal verities of mountain and sea. He adored it. Its keynote was joy. Life glittered and sang. Every day was a fête day. He loved the feeling that he was part of it, one of its gay pleasure-seekers. That was the side of it he chose to see. What if there was another, a sinister one! As far as he was concerned it did not exist. Ruin, suicide, misery, all these were lies of blackmailing journalists. The gambling was a harmless diversion indulged in by people who lost what they could afford to lose. Those who fell were only the weak who would have gone to the wall in some other way. No, it was the most adorable place on earth.
One evening as he climbed the long hill to the Casino, his thoughts were of the pleasantest. The night was rich with velvet darkness. A sense of rain lurked in the crystal purity of the air, a soft reluctant rain that might come before morning. On the concrete blocks that protect the harbour the little lights of fishermen made swirls of gold, and their nets moved round and round, scooping up the fish attracted by the glow. The water of the harbour was as black as patent leather, and the quay lamps shot down long bright stems that sprouted into silver foliage. The few lights on the dark heights of Monaco seemed only to accentuate its mystery.
He stood for a while where the white bust of Berloitz springs on a shaft of marble from a patch of purple pansies. He looked past the fiery frontages of the vast hotels, to where, above them all, the cornice of the Riviera Palace appeared like an agraffe of pearls. He inhaled deeply the breath of the sea. How well he felt! Never since the year before the war, when he played cricket and football, had he felt so fit. He was a man again, ready to tackle the job of life.
As he walked past the band-stand the Casino windows made panels of orange against the biscuit-coloured stone. No, he would not play again that night. One must not abuse one’s luck. He had already made three hundred francs. He had now a thousand of the bank’s money to gamble with. To-morrow he would buy ten chips of a hundred francs each and play with them instead of with louis. He was full of confidence. To-morrow the battle again; to-night the joy of victory. He rounded the corner where the grounds of the Casino overhang the station, and entered the quieter garden beyond. Finding a shadowed seat he sat down to smoke. He was soon in a happy reverie.