It could not be possible! As she saw another thousand swept away she felt physically sick. She sat down on a lounge, dazed, stunned. The impassive croupiers seemed suddenly to become mocking satyrs, the great guilded hall, pitiless, cruel. She watched a little hunch-backed croupier spin the wheel by its brass handle; he flipped the ivory sphere in the other direction in a careless, casual manner. The girl started up. It was as if she were an automaton, moved by some force outside of her will. Taking a third thousand franc bill from her bag, she staked it in the same way as before. No use to stake on zero this time. The chance of its coming up a third time was a million to one. She saw the ball go scuttling among the brass knobs; she heard a great murmur from the gazing crowd; all eyes turned admiringly to the little hunchback who tried to look as if he had done it on purpose.... ZERO!
She walked away. A bitter recklessness had seized her. She took out her remaining thousand franc bill. She would risk it anywhere, anyhow. A red haired man was coming in at the door. That was an inspiration. She would play on the red and leave it for a paroli. She went over to the nearest croupier and handed him her bill.
“Rouge, please.”
But the croupier misunderstood. He put the bill on black, looking at her for approval. After all, what did it matter? Let it remain on black. She nodded and black it was. Once more the ball whizzed dizzily round and dropped into its slot. Rouge.
She had lost. In less than four minutes she had lost four thousand francs. She pulled down her veil and walked out of the gambling rooms. Her legs were weak under her and she felt faint. She sat down on a bench in the atrium. It could not be true! She must have dreamt it. She opened her hand-bag of shabby black leather and searched feverishly. All she found was about thirty francs.
She was broke.
CHAPTER SIX
DERELICT
1.
THEN began the great struggle of Margot Leblanc to regain the money she had lost. It was a pitiable, pathetic struggle, full of desperate hope. Starting with ten francs, she sought to win back the two thousand needed to buy the shop with Jeanne. She kept her room at the pension, but gave up taking her meals there. Instead she had a cup of coffee and a roll in a cheap café in the Condamine. She would do without sleep, she told herself; she would be shabby and shiver with cold ... but she would win back that money!
Every morning she took her place among that weird and shabby mob of women who storm the Casino doors at opening time, and scramble for places at the tables, hoping to sell them in the afternoon to some prosperous player. The Casino, which had been the cause of their ruin, lets them thus eke out a miserable existence. Threadbare creatures with vulturish faces, they hang over the tables, quick-clawed to clutch up the stakes of the unwary.