autiful spectacle of nature I
think I could have been content, but Alma, with her honeyed and
insincere words, took me to the Casino on the usual plea of keeping her
in countenance.

I hated the place from the first, with its stale air, its chink of louis
d'or, its cry of the croupiers, its strained faces about the tables, and
its general atmosphere of wasted hopes and fears and needless misery and
despair.

As often as I could I crept out to look at the flower fetes in the
streets, or to climb the hill of La Turbie and think I was on my native
rocks with Martin Conrad, or even to sit in my room and watch the poor
wounded pigeons from the pigeon-traps as they tumbled and ducked into
the sea after the shots fired, by cruel and unsportsmanlike sportsmen,
from the rifle-range below.

In Monte Carlo my husband's vices seemed to me to grow rank and fast.
The gambling fever took complete possession of him. At first he won and
then he drank heavily, but afterwards he lost and then his nature became
still more ugly and repulsive.

One evening towards eight o'clock, I was in my room, trying to comfort a
broken-winged pigeon which had come floundering through the open window,
when my husband entered with wild eyes.

"The red's coming up at all the tables," he cried breathlessly. "Give me
some money, quick!"

I told him I had no money except the few gold pieces in my purse.

"You've a cheque book--give me a cheque, then."

I told him that even if I gave him a cheque he could not cash it that
night, the banks being closed.

"The jewellers are open though, and you have jewels, haven't you? Stop
fooling with that creature, and let me have some of them to pawn."

The situation was too abject for discussion, so I pointed to the drawer
in which my jewels were kept, and he tore it open, took what he wanted
and went out hurriedly without more words.

After that I saw no more of him for two days, when with black rings
about his eyes he came in to say he must leave "this accursed place"
immediately or we should all be ruined.

Our last stopping-place was Paris, and in my ignorance of the great
French capital which has done so much for the world, I thought it must
be the sink of every kind of corruption.

We put up at a well-known hotel in the Champs Elysees, and there (as
well as in the cafes in the Bois and at the races at Longchamps on
Sundays) we met the same people again, most of them English and
Americans on their way