aid I was a bit
brutal. You see I couldn't help thinking it was rather hard that the
money I'd worked for was to be squandered; and I spoke rather sharply to
the poor child."

Toni, listening, thought he was justified in speaking sharply, but she
did not venture to say so.

"I scolded her first--she was like a child expecting to be sent to
bed--and then I got a statement of her debts and paid them. But I told
her, at the same time, that I should never do it again. I promised to
help her in little ways if the allowance I made her was insufficient;
but I pointed out to her that my income wouldn't stand the drain of huge
payments like these; and she cried pitifully and promised, solemnly,
that she would never play for money again."

"And she did?" Toni's interest in the story was her excuse.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Of course. It was in her blood. Gambling in one form or another she
must have. Someone told me afterwards--after the crash--that it was an
almost uncanny sight to see my wife, looking like a child with her curls
and her big grey eyes, sitting at the bridge table playing feverishly
into the small hours of the morning; or talking to bookmakers' clerks
with an evidently inborn knowledge of the ways of horse-racing. I was a
fool, of course. Instead of sitting in my studio painting portraits, I
ought to have gone about with her--and yet, if I had, there'd have been
no money for either of us."

He sighed heavily.

"Well, the crash came eventually. Twice more I paid her debts and twice
she swore to give up her folly. Then I was sent for to a big place in
Wales, to paint some portraits--those of the three daughters of the
house--and of course I had to go. I had been there a month when I got an
urgent wire from my solicitors to return at once; and back to town I
went, to see what mischief my little wife had been getting into."

"And you found----"

"I found the house in an uproar. Waiting for me was my solicitor, and
with him a Jewish-looking man who was the head of a large jeweller's
business in the West End. Also--in another room--were a detective and a
well-known pawnbroker. Now--can you reconstruct the story they told
me--between them?"

She shook her head.

"No, I can't imagine what it was."

"You wouldn't." For a moment a sort of tenderness softened his tone,
which hardened again as he went on. "It seems my wife had never, from
the beginning, told me the truth, with regard to the extent of her