and
they were playing with them like men in a ghostly dream. They never
lifted their eyes. They threw down cards on the table in silence, they
gathered them up with a muttered word and went on again. They seemed to
John like the wild phantasmagoria of some visionary hell. Their silent,
mechanical movements, their red eyelids, their broad white faces,
utterly devoid of intellect or expression, terrified him. He could not
avoid the tense, shocked accent with which he called his brother's name.

Harry looked up as if he had heard a voice in his sleep. A strained
unlovely light was on his face. His luck had turned. He was going to
win. He could not speak. His whole soul was bent upon the next throw and
with a cry of satisfaction he lifted the little roll of bills the
croupier pushed towards him.

Then John laid his hand firmly on Harry's shoulder. "_Give that money to
me_," he said and in a bewildered manner Harry mechanically obeyed the
command. Then John, holding it between his finger and thumb, walked
straight to the hearth and threw the whole roll into the fire. For a
moment there was a dead silence; then two of the youngest men rose to
their feet. John went back to the table. Cards from every hand were
scattered there, and looking steadily at the men round it, John asked
with intense feeling,

"GENTLEMEN, _what will it profit you, if you gain the whole world and
lose your own souls; for what shall a man give in exchange for his
soul?_"

A dead silence followed these questions, but as John left the room with
his brother, he heard an angry querulous voice exclaim,

"Most outrageous! Most unusual! O croupier! croupier!"

Then he was at the door. He paid the promised pound, and as his cab was
waiting, he motioned to Harry to enter it. All the way to Charing Cross,
John preserved an indignant silence and Harry copied his attitude,
though the almost incessant beating of his doubled hands together showed
the intense passion which agitated him.

Half an hour's drive brought them to the privacy of their hotel rooms
and as quickly as they entered them, John turned on his brother like a
lion brought to bay.

"How dared you," he said in a low, hard voice, "how dared you let me
find you in such a place?"

"I was with gentlemen playing a quiet game. You had no right to disturb
me."

"You were playing with thieves and blackguards. There was not a
gentleman in the room--no, not one."

"John, take care what you say."