Septimus | Page 6

a stranger's money, but she had won for him thirty-five times his
stake. She watched the louis greedily lest it should be swept away by a
careless croupier--perhaps the only impossible thing that could not
happen at Monte Carlo--and stretched out her arm past the bland old
lady in tense determination to frustrate further felonious proceedings.
The croupier pitched seven large gold coins across the table. She
clutched them feverishly and turned to deliver them to their owner. He
was nowhere to be seen. She broke through the ring, and with her hands
full of gold scanned the room in dismayed perplexity.
At last she espied him standing dejectedly by another table. She rushed
across the intervening space and held out the money.
"See, you have won!"
"Oh, 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 Hôtel 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