But again he walked forward blindly, on past several of the tables encircled by their hot, eager crowds, until he came to the Moorish room. As he was passing a man rose wearily from the roulette-table with a roll of notes in his hand, and instantly he took his chair. He cast a furtive glance around the circle of faces, pale beneath the green-shaded oil lamps suspended from the long brass chains. The emotions of hope, disgust, anxiety, or greed were displayed on each of the perspiring countenances ranged around that table. Next him was a beautiful woman well-known in Riviera society, winning, and therefore a little excited, her cheeks burning with two bright spots, her eyes shining like lamps; and she looked like a girl as she now and then heaved a deep sigh. Next her a blotchy-faced man, smelling strongly of rank cigars, was playing and losing heavily, his countenance betraying nothing more than a half-hearted smile, while opposite a staid matron made room for her daughter, and handed her money to put on, believing, as so many believe, that innocence is a kind of “mascot.”
He lowered his gaze. The deathly pallor of his own cheeks had attracted notice. It seemed as though these people, many of them personally known to him, held him in suspicion.
He paused in hesitation, holding his breath the while, trying to calm the wild tumultuous throbbing of his heart.
“Messieurs, faites vos jeux!”
The red and black disc in the centre of the table was revolving, the money was already placed within the squares, and the little ivory ball had already been launched when, with sudden resolve, he drew from his pocket a louis and tossed it carelessly upon the scarlet diamond.
“Gain, I fly!” he murmured to himself. “Lose, I remain.”
In flinging the coin his hand had lost its deftness, for instead of falling flat, it fell upon its edge and rolled from the “red” over the line into the “impair.”
At that instant sounded the monotonous wearying cry,—
“Rien ne va plus!”
Then there was a moment’s hush, the ball fell with a click into its socket, and the croupier’s rake came swiftly before his fevered eyes and swept away the coin he had staked.