ed at me for a moment, holding the door
with his foot. Then gently closing it, he preceded me across a hall and up
a long staircase. At the top was a passageway and another door, and behind
this a large room paneled in dark wood. On one side of this apartment was
a high desk. Here sat the cashier counting money, and arranging little
piles of chips of various colors. In the centre stood a table covered with
black cloth: I had always supposed such tables to be green. About it were
seated ten people, the croupier in the middle. The game had already begun.
I moved up a chair, saying that I would look on, but not play.

Had the occasion been a clinic, the game a corpse, and the croupier the
operating surgeon, the group about the table could not have been more
absorbed or more silent; a cold, death-like, ominous stillness that seemed
to saturate the very air. The only sounds were the occasional clickings of
the ivory chips, like the chattering of teeth, and the monotones of the
croupier announcing the results of the play:--

"Faites vos jeux. Le jeu est fait; rien ne va plus."

I began to study the _personnel_ of this clinic of chance.

Two Englishmen in evening dress sat side by side, never speaking, scarcely
moving, their eyes riveted on the falling cards flipped from the
croupier's hands. A coarse-featured, oily-skinned woman--a Russian, I
thought--looked on calmly, resting her head on her palm. A man in a gray
suit, with waxy face and watery, yellow eyes, made paper pills, rolling
them slowly between thumb and forefinger--his features as immobile as a
death-mask. A blue-eyed, blond German officer, with a decoration on the
lapel of his coat, nonchalantly twirled his mustache, his shoulders
straining in tension. A Parisienne, with bleached hair and penciled
eyebrows, leaned over her companion's arm. There was also a flashily
dressed negro, evidently a Haytian, who sat motionless at the far end, as
stolid as a boiler, only the steam-gauge of his eyes denoting the pressure
beneath.

No one spoke, no one laughed.

Two of the group interested me at once,--the croupier and a woman who sat
within three feet of me.

The croupier, who was in evening dress, might have been of any age from
thirty to fifty. His eyes were deep-set and glassy, like those of a
consumptive. His hair was jet-black, his face clean-shaven; the skin, not
ivory, but a dirty white, and flabby, like the belly of a toad. His thin
and bloodless lips were fl