I assured him that I had often heard of him. At this he was unaffectedly pleased.
"But," I added, "it's always more interesting to hear a man talked about by himself." And indeed, since he had NOT handed his winnings over to me, I did hope he would at any rate give me some glimpses into that "great character" of his. Full though his life had been, he seemed but like a rather clever schoolboy out on a holiday. I wanted to know more.
"That beer looks good," he admitted when the waiter came back. I asked him to change his mind, but he shook his head, raised to his lips the tumbler of water that had been placed before him, and meditatively drank a deep draft. "I never," he then said, "touch alcohol of any sort." He looked solemn; but all men do look solemn when they speak of their own habits, whether positive or negative, and no matter how trivial; and so, though I had really no warrant for not supposing him a reclaimed drunkard, I dared ask him for what reason he abstained.
"When I say I NEVER touch alcohol," he said hastily, in a tone as of self-defense, "I mean that I don't touch it often, or, at any rate—well, I never touch it when I'm gambling, you know. It—it takes the edge off."
His tone did make me suspicious. For a moment I wondered whether he had married the barmaid rather for what she symbolized than for what in herself she was. But no, surely not; he had been only nineteen years old. Nor in any way had he now, this steady, brisk, clear-eyed fellow, the aspect of one who had since fallen.
"The edge off the excitement?" I asked.
"Rather. Of course that sort of excitement seems awfully stupid to YOU; but—no use denying it—I do like a bit of a flutter, just occasionally, you know. And one has to be in trim for it. Suppose a man sat down dead-drunk to a game of chance, what fun would it be for him? None. And it's only a question of degree. Soothe yourself ever so little with alcohol, and you don't get QUITE the full sensation of gambling. You do lose just a little something of the proper tremors before a coup, the proper throes during a coup, the proper thrill of joy or anguish after a coup. You're bound to, you know," he added, purposely making this bathos when he saw me smiling at the heights to which he had risen.
"And to-night," I asked, remembering his prosaically pensive demeanor in taking the bank, "were you feeling these throes and thrills to the utmost?"
He nodded.
"And you'll feel them again to-night?"