“You are so good. I should like to kiss you.”
But I do not allow her to kiss me. Never again.
“Seer Marcous, let us go to the little horses.”
She has a consuming passion for petits chevaux. I speak sagely of the evils of gambling. She laughs. I weakly take lower ground.
“What is the good? You have no money.”
“Oh-h! But only two francs,” she says, holding out her hand.
“Not one. Yesterday you lost.”
“But to-day I shall win. I want to give you something I saw in a shop. Oh, a beautiful thing.” Then I feel a hand steal into the pocket of my dinner jacket where I carry loose silver for this very purpose, just as a lover of horses carries lumps of sugar for the nose of a favourite pony, and immediately it is withdrawn with a cry of joy and triumph, and she skips back out of my reach. Then she takes my arm and leads me from the sweet night-air into the hot little room with its crowd around the nine gyrating animals.
“I shall put it on 5. I always put on 5. He is a nice, clean, white, pretty horse.”
She stakes two francs, watches the turn in a tense agony of excitement; she wins, comes running to me with sixteen francs clutched tight in her hand.