eal into the pocket of my
dinner jacket where I carry loose silver for this very purpose, just
as a lover of horses carries lumps of sugar for the nose of a favourite
pony, and immediately it is withdrawn with a cry of joy and triumph, and
she skips back out of my reach. Then she takes my arm and leads me from
the sweet night-air into the hot little room with its crowd around the
nine gyrating animals.

"I shall put it on 5. I always put on 5. He is a nice, clean, white,
pretty horse."

She stakes two francs, watches the turn in a tense agony of excitement;
she wins, comes running to me with sixteen francs clutched tight in her
hand.

"See. I said I should win."

"Come away then and be happy."

But she makes a protesting grimace, and before I can stop her, runs back
to stake again on 5. In twenty minutes she is ruined and returns to me
wearing an expression of abject misery. She is too desolate even to try
the fortune of the dinner-jacket pocket. I take her outside and restore
her to beatitude with grenadine syrup and soda-water. She rejects the
straws. With her elbows on the marble table, the glass held in both
hands, she drinks sensuously, in little sips.

And I, Marcus Ordeyne, sit by watching her, a most contented philosopher
of forty. A dingo dog could not be so contented. That young fellow, I
unhesitatingly assert, must be the most brainless of his type. I suffer
fools gladly, as a general rule, but if I see much of this one I shall
do him some injury.

After dejeuner we strolled to the top of the west cliff and lay on the
thick dry grass. The earth has never known a more perfect afternoon. A
day of turquoise and diamond.

The air itself was diaphanous blue. Below us the tiny place slumbered in
the sunshine; scarcely a sign of life save specks of washer-women on the
beach bending over white patches which we knew were linen spread out to
dry. The ebb-tide lapped lazily on the shingle, where the sea changed
suddenly from ultramarine to a fringe of feathery white. A white sail
or two flecked the blue of the bay. A few white wisps of cirrus gleamed
above our heads. Around us, on the cliff-tops, the green pastures and
meadows and, farther inland, the cornfields stacked in harvest, and
great masses of trees. Lying on our backs, between sea and sky, we
seemed utterly alone. Carlotta and I were the sole inhabitants of the
earth. I dreamily disintegrated caramels from their sticky tissue-paper
wrappings for Ca