Contiguously was a billiard table on which Cantire, a cigar between his teeth, was knocking balls about. Opposite on a sofa, raised by a dais, Solférino sprawled. He looked precisely like a fat old woman.
Idly Welden wondered why his wife had accepted him. She was a Murray. The Murrays were not brilliant. But in point of birth and, for that matter, of breeding, her family, like Maud’s and like his own, were superior, in every way, to any imperial spawn.
He passed on. Beyond was the green baize of a baccarat table, about which now other men were grouped. Saraguine was dealing. The cards which he gave to the right, Aquaviva received; those to the left went to Malakoff. Behind these the others stood and punted.
Presently, Malakoff, to whom Saraguine had furnished an almost uninterrupted series of picture cards, got up, and Welden, after a circular look of inquiry, took the vacated chair.
The ill luck that had visited that side of the table continued. Across the way Aquaviva and his backers were winning. Meanwhile Welden and those behind him lost. Then, as is usual in such circumstances, the losers abandoning their positions, deserted to the favoured side and shortly, from the chair which Malakoff had relinquished, Welden was betting alone.
He had begun with hundred franc wagers. As these vanished, his stake increased. From a silk card case he drew blue and white notes, one after another, until all which it held were gone. Barring some loose gold in his waistcoat he had nothing.
“Je suis ratiboisé,” he remarked. “I am cleaned out.”
He was getting up, as Malakoff had done, when Saraguine, seeing his predicament and perhaps conscious that if he desisted, the game might cease, said to him:
“If you will, I beg of you, stake on parole.”
“Thanks,” Welden answered and resumed his seat. “A hundred louis.”
The game proceeded. Cantire had left the billiard table. Solférino approached. Aquaviva, relinquishing his chair to de Cérisy, went to the buffet, drank largely of Vichy and walked away.
“Nine!” said Welden, exposing his cards.
“Eight!” said Saraguine, exposing his own.
“Nothing,” said de Cérisy, pushing his cards aside.
Saraguine, after gathering in the money from that quarter, paid Welden and redealt.
For a while thereafter, fortune changed. The players that had deserted Welden returned. He recovered what he had lost and ten thousand francs in addition. Then luck veered. He staked the ten thousand, lost them and, a quarter of an hour later, had lost fifty thousand more.
Tranquilly, but this time definitely, he got from his seat, drank of the Vichy and went out in search of Maud.
In the hall women were grouped, talking modes and morals, the cosmopolitan gossip of London, Paris and Rome. Maud, a little removed from the others, was in a rocking chair, a slipper just visible beneath the hem of her skirt, her bare arms upraised behind her head.
Before her, Malakoff balanced himself on the arm of another chair. As Welden approached, he stood up.
“You won, I hope,” he threw out, and sauntered away.
“As it happened I lost,” Welden exclaimed, not to him, but to the girl. “I shall have to go to Paris tomorrow.”
“Dearest, I have money, eight or nine hundred francs I think,” Maud slowly, in her low, caressing voice, replied.
Welden laughed. “I could not take it and even if I could, it would not be anywhere near enough. As it is I shall have to cable.”
“Dearest, tomorrow is the , it is particularly for tomorrow we are here and in the evening Mrs. Cawtree wants us to come to her. Could you not put it off?”
“Not very comfortably. The money has to be paid at once, within the legal delays that is, and they amount to twenty-four hours. But I will be back in time for Mrs. Cawtree’s. At the latest I can take a train which gets here at nine and tonight—”
“Dearest, be careful,” the girl interrupted. Slowly she looked around. But they were quite alone. “Be sure first, won’t you,” she added, “that no one is about.”
Welden ran his long thin fingers through his bright thick hair. Not for this world certainly and probably not either for the next, would he by so much as a gesture have compromised the girl.
Much later, after he had waited longly and listened vainly and made two abortive attempts, when at last the villa seemed entirely hushed, he crossed the little space that lay between his room and hers.
The door was unlocked. As he opened it the disposition of the room was such that he could see of the girl only the rich orange of her hair, the outline of her pillowed head.
At the noise, ever so slight, which he made on entering, she turned. Immediately he heard, or thought he heard, a footfall in the corridor without. Quickly he closed the door and bolted it. It was, he noticed, massively made, of solid oak.
In the momentary uneasiness which, in circumstances such as these, even a problematic footfall may and does properly excite, he reflected that no one could get in and then immediately he told himself that no one would try.
VI
The Head
The next evening Welden left Paris for Deauville. Ordinarily, as he had told Maud, he would have arrived at nine. But the derailment of another train interfered. It was eleven when he reached the villa.
A gale was blowing. From within, through the windows and the open door, lights fell on the driveway, chequering the pebbles with yellow spots. From beyond, in a lull of the wind, came the sound of violins and voices. The villa itself was silent.
As Welden entered, a footman came running. No one else was about. Turning, he passed on to the stairs and up them.
During the delay that had supervened he told himself that because of it, Maud, ceasing to expect him, would have gone on to Mrs. Cawtree’s, and it was with the idea of dressing and of joining her that he made for his room. But, while on the stair,
