Once more there was silence between them. Finally he made a movement as if to go. "I was—I wanted—was curious to see how you had come out, Sally. That was the main reason for my troubling you. If there were other reasons, they no longer exist. I—"
"Don't go yet, father," Sally interrupted. "I have more to say."
He sat down again and waited. She was considering—trying to consider the problem before her in every aspect. But she could not get the point of view of her father and Charlie, and she wanted to.
"Father," she resumed, "what is the attraction? I have been trying hard to get a sympathetic view of it and I can't. I can't see anything except what is sordid and repulsive. The life is—is not desirable—"
"Not very desirable," he broke in, with a horrible, dry laugh.
"And it can hardly be simply covetousness. If it is, you miss your mark. What I—"
"It is not covetousness. I may as well say that it is not a sin of covetousness," he corrected, "in deference to the generally received opinion. I have no desire to gloss over and to try to excuse by a form of words, although I, personally, am not convinced that it is a sin according to natural law. However, we need not discuss that aspect of it."
He waved that view aside with a familiar motion of his hand. How familiar they were—those little tricks of the hand and of the voice! They made Sally's eyes fill and a lump come in her throat. She raised her hand to her forehead and leaned upon it. It half concealed her eyes. She said nothing. The professor went on in his old lecture-room manner; a judicial manner.
"No, it is not a sin of covetousness, but simply a passion to which any man who is subject to it can't help giving way. It is a passion as old as humanity—perhaps older. There are no more inveterate gamblers than the savages. Possibly," he added, smiling, "my little lizard had it; possibly it goes back to those ancient days that you know about, Sally. It may be that the saurians had their own games of chance and their own stakes—and, I may add, their own methods of enforcing payment. Indeed, their life was one great gamble. For that matter, life is no more than that now."
Sally made an inarticulate protest.