On the night of Oscar's first visit Helga played and lost; and seeing the strained look in her face his very soul felt sick and he walked out into the gardens. On the second night she lost again and he saw her borrow from Finsen who stood behind her. On the third night it was Finsen who played and he won largely, and then Helga, who sat by his side, seemed to be intoxicated by excitement and delight.
Next day she showed him a costly jewel which Finsen had bought for her out of his winnings. "For luck!" she said, and when Oscar protested against the present, she said:
"But why shouldn't I take it? Every penny he spends on me makes me more necessary to him for the future. Come, dear, don't be jealous. Didn't I tell you that I should have to do things that neither of us could wish?"
At this, and such as this, Oscar's sense of shame was choking him. His feeling for Helga was now in a perpetual alternation between love and hate. He loved her, he hated her, he despised her, he was proud of her, and this red riot in his blood was driving him to despair.
At one moment he thought her nature was utterly selfish, and that she would sacrifice anything and anybody to gain her ends; at the next moment he believed she loved him with an unselfish love, but that her disposition was such that she had to struggle between her love for him and her love for luxury and success, and therefore she was as much an object for pity as himself.
Sometimes, when he walked in the gardens of the Casino, he remembered how Thora had suffered as he was suffering now; and then, while the nightingale sang unseen above his head and the peace of the night soothed his soul, he told himself he was rightly punished. As he had done so he was being done by, and now the manly thing was to leave Helga and go away; and then if she loved him she would suffer, too, and that would be his best revenge.
But at other times, when he saw Helga wearing the bracelets and brooches which Finsen had given her he felt that flight was impossible; that he must fight this man with his own weapons and subdue this woman on her own terms.
Yet how was he to do it? When he asked himself that question one answer, and one only, came back to him with every breath he drew in that atmosphere of gamblers, the old, delusive, mocking answer--he must do it by means of play.
But while he had money enough for his own needs he had none for the gambling-table, and it was not at first that he saw a way to the means with which to begin. Suddenly an idea came to him--he would make the man himself find the means--and without waiting to consider this, without pausing to count the cost, with his pulses throbbing painfully and his heart leaping with a devilish joy, he hurried into the Casino and drew Finsen aside to the alcove covered by palms, and said, in a false and tremulous voice:
"Old friend, do you remember the first time I called on you at Covent Garden?"