francs at the
hotel, and he possessed a note for a hundred francs, two notes for fifty
francs, some French gold and silver, and some English silver.

Continuing to play upon his faultless system, he lost another fifty
francs.

'I can ask her to lend me something. I won all that lot for her,' he
said.

'You know perfectly well you can't ask her to lend you something,' said
an abstract reasoning power within him. 'It's just because you won all
that lot for her that you can't. You'd be afraid lest she should think
you were sponging on her. Can you imagine yourself asking her?'

'Well, I can ask Tom,' he said.

'Tom!' exclaimed the abstract reasoning power.

'I can wire to Snyder,' he said.

'That would look a bit thick,' replied the abstract reasoning power,
'telegraphing for money--from Monte Carlo.'

Henry took the note for a hundred francs, and put it on red, and went
icy cold in the feet and hands, and swore a horrid oath.

Black won.

He had sworn, and he was a man of his word. He walked straight out of
the Casino; but uncertainly, feebly, as a man who has received a
staggering blow between the eyes, as a man who has been pitched into a
mountain-pool in January, as a somnambulist who has wakened to find
himself on the edge of a precipice.

He paid his bill at the hotel, and asked the time of the next train to
Paris. There was no next train to Paris that night, but there was a
train to Marseilles. He took it. Had it been a train only to Nice, or to
the Plutonian realms, he would have taken it. He said no good-byes. He
left no messages, no explanations. He went. On the next afternoon but
one he arrived at Victoria with fivepence in his pocket. Twopence he
paid to deposit his luggage in the cloakroom, and threepence for the
Underground fare to Charing Cross. From Charing Cross he walked up to
Kenilworth Mansions and got a sovereign from Mark Snyder. Coutts's,
where Mark financed himself, was closed, and a sovereign was all that
Mark had.

Henry was thankful that the news had not yet reached London--at any
rate, it had not reached Mark Snyder. It was certain to do so, however.
Henry had read in that morning's Paris edition of the _New York Herald_:
'Mr. Henry S. Knight, the famous young English novelist, broke the bank
at Monte Carlo the other day. He was understood to be playing in
conjunction with Mademoiselle Cosette, the well-known Parisian
_divette_, who is also on a visit to Monte Carlo. I am told t