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Pethel asked me to tell him who every one was. I told him no one was any one in particular, and suggested that we should talk about ourselves.

“You mean,” he laughed, “that you want to know who the devil I am?”

I assured him that I had often heard of him. At this he was unaffectedly pleased.

“But,” I added, “it’s always more interesting to hear a man talked about by himself.” And indeed, since he had NOT handed his winnings over to me, I did hope he would at any rate give me some glimpses into that “great character” of his. Full though his life had been, he seemed but like a rather clever schoolboy out on a holiday. I wanted to know more.

“That beer looks good,” he admitted when the waiter came back. I asked him to change his mind, but he shook his head, raised to his lips the tumbler of water that had been placed before him, and meditatively drank a deep draft. “I never,” he then said, “touch alcohol of any sort.” He looked solemn; but all men do look solemn when they speak of their own habits, whether positive or negative, and no matter how trivial; and so, though I had really no warrant for not supposing him a reclaimed drunkard, I dared ask him for what reason he abstained.

“When I say I NEVER touch alcohol,” he said hastily, in a tone as of self-defense, “I mean that I don’t touch it often, or, at any rate–well, I never touch it when I’m gambling, you know. It–it takes the edge off.”

His tone did make me suspicious. For a moment I wondered whether he had married the barmaid rather for what she symbolized than for what in herself she was. But no, surely not; he had been only nineteen years old. Nor in any way had he now, this steady, brisk, clear-eyed fellow, the aspect of one who had since fallen.

“The edge off the excitement?” I asked.

“Rather. Of course that sort of excitement seems awfully stupid to YOU; but–no use denying it–I do like a bit of a flutter, just occasionally, you know. And one has to be in trim for it. Suppose a man sat down dead-drunk to a game of chance, what fun would it be for him? None. And it’s only a question of degree. Soothe yourself ever so little with alcohol, and you don’t get QUITE the full sensation of gambling. You do lose just a little something of the proper tremors before a coup, the proper throes during a coup, the proper thrill of joy or anguish after a coup. You’re bound to, you know,” he added, purposely making this bathos when he saw me smiling at the heights to which he had risen.

“And to-night,” I asked, remembering his prosaically pensive demeanor in taking the bank, “were you feeling these throes and thrills to the utmost?”

He nodded.

“And you’ll feel them again to-night?”

“I hope so.”

“I wonder you can stay away.”

“Oh, one gets a bit deadened after an hour or so. One needs to be freshened up. So long as I don’t bore you–“

I laughed, and held out my cigarette-case.

“I rather wonder you smoke,” I murmured, after giving him a light. “Nicotine’s a sort of drug. Doesn’t it soothe you? Don’t you lose just a little something of the tremors and things?”

He looked at me gravely.

“By Jove!” he ejaculated, “I never thought of that. Perhaps you’re right. ‘Pon my word, I must think that over.”

I wondered whether he were secretly laughing at me. Here was a man to whom–so I conceived, with an effort of the imagination–the loss or gain of a few hundred pounds could hardly matter. I told him I had spoken in jest. “To give up tobacco might,” I said, “intensify the pleasant agonies of a gambler staking his little all. But in your case–well, I don’t see where the pleasant agonies come in.”