“Fortune telling with cards,” Jeanne said thoughtfully after a time, “is very old. Madame Bihari told me all about it many, many times. She truly believed that cards could foretell your fate. Do you think she was wrong?”
“It is strange,” Florence replied in a sober tone. “It is hard to know what to believe. The whole thing seems impossible, and yet—”
“There are many thousands who have believed,” Jeanne broke in. “Many years ago there was a very famous teller of fortunes. He used seventy-eight cards. Those were terrible times, the days of revolution. Men were having their heads cut off because they were called traitors. No one knew who would be next to be suspected and led away to the guillotine.
“Men used to come creeping to Ettella’s place in the middle of the night to ask if their heads were to fall in the morning.
“Can you see it, Florence?” Jeanne spread out her arms in a dramatic gesture. “A dimly lighted room, a haggard face opposite one who quietly shuffles the cards, invites the haggard one to cut the cards, then shuffles again. He spreads them out, one, two, three, four. Nothing to laugh at, Florence—no joke! It is life or death. Could the cards tell? Did they tell? When the fortune teller whispered, ‘You shall live,’ or when he said hoarsely, ‘Tomorrow you shall die,’ did he always speak the truth? Who can say? That was more than a hundred and fifty years ago. But Florence,” Jeanne’s eyes shone with a strange light, “even under those terrible circumstances, men did believe. And they still believe today.”
“Yes.” Florence shook her shoulders as if to waken herself from a bad dream. “But—many of them are frauds of the worst sort. I can prove that. We—” she sprang to her feet. “We shall try it tomorrow. This time you shall have your fortune told. What do you say?”
“Anything you may desire,” Jeanne answered quietly. “Only let us hope it may be a good fortune.”
“That will not matter,” was Florence’s rather strange reply, “for in the end I feel certain that I can prove the fortune teller to be a cheat. And that,” she added, “in spite of the fact that I only know her name is Myrtle Rand and that her ‘studio,’ as she calls it, is in the twenty-five hundred block on North Clark Street.”
“We have agreed to try this,” said Jeanne, “but how will you prove that she is a fraud?”
“You shall see!” Florence laughed. “This wonderful ‘reading’ is going to cost you two whole dollars. This is my prediction. But if you feel it is not worth it, I shall make it up to you out of my expense account.”