“Thanks!” said Florence, charmed by this compliment from so strange a hostess.
CHAPTER XII
THREE RUBIES
“Life,” said the lady cop, as the toe of her shoe traced odd patterns in the ashes before the fire, “at times seems very strange. We are born with certain impulses. They are with us when we enter the world. They are in us, a part of our very being. There is in these very impulses the power to make or break us.
“One of these impulses sometimes takes the form of a vague longing. We do not always understand it. We want something. But what do we want? This we cannot tell.
“As this longing takes form, many times it discloses itself as a desire for change. We feel an impulse that drives us on. We wish to go, go, go. For most of us, extensive travel is impossible. We have our homes, our friends, our duties. We do not wander as the Indians and the Eskimos do. Spring, with its showers and budding trees, beckons to us in vain. So, too, does the bright, golden autumn.
“But, after all, what is at the back of all this longing but a desire to take a chance? The savage, roving from place to place, wagers his very life upon his ability to procure food in the strange land in which he wanders.
“So we, too, at times, feel a desire to make wagers with life. But we are city-dwellers, living in homes. No matter. We must take a chance.
“No more wholesome impulse can be found in a human soul than this. Without this impulse implanted in a human heart, the New World would never have been known. Man would still be dressing in skins, living in caves, and retiring to his rest by the light of a tallow dip.
“The desire to take a chance is in every heart. No one knows this better than does the professional gambler. He seizes upon this impulse, invites it to act, and reaps a rich harvest.”
She paused to throw fresh fuel upon the fire. There was dry birch bark in it. It flamed up at once. As the light illumined her intense face and caused her eyes to glow, she said with startling suddenness: