Septimus | Page 6

Lord!" murmured the man, removing his hands from his dinner-jacket pockets, but not offering to take his winnings. "What a lot of trouble I have given you."
"Of course you have," she said tartly. "Why didn't you stay?"
"I don't know," he replied. "How can one tell why one doesn't do things?"
"Well, please take the money now and let me get rid of it. There are seven pieces of five louis each."
She counted the coins into his hand, and then suddenly flushed scarlet. She had forgotten to claim the original louis which she had staked. Where was it? What had become of it? As well try, she thought, to fish up a coin thrown into the sea. She felt like a thief.
"There ought to be another louis," she stammered.
"It doesn't matter," said the man.
"But it does matter. You might think that I--I kept it."
"That's too absurd," he answered. "Are you interested in guns?"
"Guns?"
She stared at him. He appeared quite sane.
"I remember now I was thinking of guns when I went away," he explained. "They're interesting things to think about."
"But don't you understand that I owe you a louis? I forgot all about it. If my purse weren't empty I would repay you. Will you stay here till I can get some money from my hotel--the H?tel de Paris?"
She spoke with some vehemence. How could the creature expect her to remain in his debt? But the creature only passed his fingers through his upstanding hair and smiled wanly.
"Please don't say anything more about it. It distresses me. The croupiers don't return the stake, as a general rule, unless you ask for it. They assume you want to back your luck. Perhaps it has won again. For goodness' sake don't bother about it--and thank you very, very much."
He bowed politely and moved a step or two away. But Zora, struck by a solution of the mystery which had not occurred to her, as one cannot grasp all the ways and customs of gaming establishments in ten minutes, rushed back to the other table. She arrived just in time to hear the croupier asking whom the louis on seventeen belonged to. The number had turned up again.
This time she brought the thirty-six louis to the stranger.
"Dear me," said he, taking the money. "It is very astonishing. But why did you trouble?"
"Because I'm a woman of common sense, I suppose."
He looked at the coins in his hand as if they were shells which a child at the seaside might have brought him, and then raised his eyes slowly to hers.
"You are a very gracious lady." His glance and tone checked an impulse of exasperation. She smiled.
"At any rate, I've won fifty-six pounds for you, and you ought to be grateful."
He made a little gesture of acknowledgement. Had he been a more dashing gentleman he might have expressed his gratitude for the mere privilege of conversing with a gracious lady so beautiful. They had drifted from the outskirts of the crowded table and found themselves in the thinner crowd of saunterers. It was the height of the Monte Carlo season and the feathers and diamonds and rouge and greedy eyes and rusty bonnets of all nations confused the sight and paralyzed thought. Yet among all the women of both worlds Zora Middlemist stood out remarkable. As Septimus Dix afterwards explained, the rooms that evening contained a vague kind of conglomerate woman and Zora Middlemist. And the herd of men envied the creature on whom she smiled so graciously.
She was dressed in black, as became a young widow, but it was a black which bore no sign of mourning. The black, sweeping ostrich plume of a picture hat gave her an air of triumph. Black gloves reaching more than halfway up shapely arms and a gleam of snowy neck above a black chiffon bodice disquieted the imagination. She towered over her present companion, who was five foot seven and slimly built.
"You've brought me all this stuff, but what am I to do with it?" he asked helplessly.
"Perhaps I had better take care of it for you."
It was a relief from the oppressive loneliness to talk to a human being; so she lingered wistfully in conversation. A pathetic eagerness came into the man's face.
"I wish you would," said he, drawing a handful from his jacket pocket. "I should be so much happier."
"You can hardly be such a gambler," she laughed.
"Oh, no! It's not that at all. Gambling bores me."
"Why do you play, then?"
"I don't. I staked that louis because I wanted to see whether I should be interested. I wasn't, as I began to think about the guns. Have you had breakfast?"
Again Zora was startled. A sane man does not talk of breakfasting at nine o'clock in the evening. But if he were a lunatic perhaps it were wise