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But I do not allow her to kiss me. Never again.
Seer Marcous, let us go to the little horses.
She has a consuming passion for _petits chevaux_. I speak sagely
of the evils of gambling. She laughs. I weakly take lower
ground.
What is the good? You have no money.
Ohh! But only two francs, she says, holding out her hand.
Not one. Yesterday you lost.
But today I shall win. I want to give you something I saw in a
shop. Oh, a beautiful thing. Then I feel a hand steal 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for the nose of a favourite pony, and immediately it is withdrawn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
nightair 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 dinnerjacket pocket.
I take her outside and restore her to beatitude with grenadine
syrup and sodawater. 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
washerwomen on the beach bending over white patches which we
knew were linen spread out to dry. The ebbtide lapped lazily on

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