He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, and continued to study the countenance of the claimant, opposite. Many a lawyer who appeared in court against Mr. Jarvis for the first time had plucked up heart when he saw the oddlooking old gentleman with chubby round cheeks and kind gray eyes. But when Mr. Jarvis was on his feet and the kind eyes had grown steely, and the rasping voice went on tearing the opposing case to tatters with merciless irony, the situation assumed another aspect. When in action, Mr. Jarvis apparently underwent a complete metamorphosis, and he was in action now.

A change came over the inspector's face. "Pay monsieur at once!" he said, tapping the croupier on the shoulder.

Very proper," observed Mr. Jarvis as, drawing in two stacks of pink chips, and bowing to the inspector, he looked about the table and noted that the painted woman with the sneering smile had disappeared.

The other players, who had been casting glances about equally compounded of amusement and irritation at the rather gnomelike-looking old gentleman who had been responsible for such an unprecedented thing as a delay at a table, thought he had suddenly become a very jovial old gnome indeed.

"Bonne chance, monsieur!" said the inspector, smiling at Mr. Jarvis, as he turned to go. Gaily Mr. Jarvis waved his hand in reply.

This was the first time for many months when he had encountered a situation on which, so to speak, the teeth of his mind could bite, and the exhilaration of it went to his head completely. With perfect outward propriety of manner he now proceeded to run amuck. Pushing his entire store of pink chips to the croupier at his side, he said briskly:

"Please change these for hundred franc chips-white ones, you know."

Thereupon, increasing his stakes to maximums, Mr. Jarvis began to back numbers not only en plein but from every possible additional combination. As success followed success the world outside of the Salon Privé ceased to exist. It was not that he was winning money. What filled his mind to the exclusion of all else

was the fixed idea that, owing to some marvellous and, on the whole, highly commendable quality within him, he could anticipate the destination of the little ivory ball. Little by little the attention of the whole table became concentrated on his play, and after every third or fourth turn of the wheel murmurs of envious applause acclaimed still another great coup. When the chef de table summoned an attendant and sent for an additional supply of cash, even the croupiers emerged from their professional apathy and stared resentfully at the lucky plunger.

As Mr. Jarvis walked away from the little booth at the side of the room where he had finally reduced his winnings to cash, a painfully acute realization of the nature of his recent performances smote him. Immediately his conscience, speaking very plain English this time, fairly shouted:

"Worthless, degraded old man! Do you know what you've done? You've spent three hours rubbing elbows with some of the worst company in Europe! You've gambled so recklessly that every one in this den of iniquity is talking about you! And that isn't all! You've won three hundred and ninety-seven thousand francs; that is to say, slightly over nineteen thousand dollars! Shame! Shame! Shame!"

"Bless my soul!" muttered Mr. Jarvis shudderingly.

For an instant an insane impulse to rush to the wicket and force his winnings back on the attendant arrested his steps. But would that purge him of his offense?

As he moved slowly through the public rooms with their bad air and their heavy pall of decorously repressed excitement, the likeness of the place to a court again occurred to him; to a court just after the jury had brought in a verdict of "Guilty," a verdict directed, it seemed, against a gray-haired old gentleman who had not heart enough left to appeal.

Greatly depressed, he was passing the table near the exit when in the course of a furtive and guilty glance at the players he saw something which brought him once more to a standstill. At the side of the table opposite him a woman sat leaning forward on her elbows; her head

bowed in her hands. Mr. Jarvis could not see her face, but her figure was young and graceful. The attitude was one of utter misery.

Instantly, Mr. Jarvis forgot his own shame and remorse, and a gust of pity swept over him.

Suddenly the graceful figure straightened, the hands came down from the face, and the young woman pushed back her chair and rose unsteadily and started for the exit. In her eyes, wild and staring, was a look of complete hopelessness. Mr. Jarvis's heart jumped as he saw it was Madame Duclos, the dancer at the Hôtel Côte d'Azur who had fainted the evening before.

Suddenly galvanized into life, Mr. Jarvis hurried after the young woman, who, as she paused before the door and swayed on her feet, threw a startled glance at the cherubic-looking old gentleman and seemed to recognize him. She drew in her breath sharply, and would have fallen if Mr. Jarvis had not dauntlessly put his arm around her waist and supported her irresolute steps into the great entrance hall and thence to the outside. Here in the air, grown cool with the coming darkness, she seemed to shake herself free from the spell under which she had lain. She made no pretense of revived cheerfulness, however. Her ashen-white face was haggard.

"Thank you," she said in a low voice, looking not at Mr. Jarvis but the ground. Mr. Jarvis stood peering at her doubtfully.

"Can I take you back to Menton?" he asked at length, waving his hand toward the row of automobiles standing on the further side of the little square.

"Do not trouble about me any further, please," answered Madame Duclos in a voice which quivered with agony.

Mr. Jarvis raised his hat and took a step away. Then he turned his head and cast a sharp appraising glance at the young woman over his shoulder. She stood perfectly motionless, staring before her.

Mr. Jarvis turned and, coming back to Madame Duclos, said:

"Look here. Something's gone very wrong. You've lost money, of course. But it must be worse than that. Tell me about it. I am used to advising people

who are in trouble. That's my trade; at least, part of my trade. Come." Madame Duclos's expression became panic-stricken.

"No! No!" she gasped. "I cannot talk about it."

"Come!" repeated Mr. Jarvis.

Taking Madame Duclos by the arm, he gently urged her down the steps to the now almost deserted terrace of the Casino, and led her to some chairs near the balustrade.

"Sit down," said Mr. Jarvis. "Will you be cold?"

Madame Duclos shook her head, took a chair, and immediately burst into a fit of sobbing which shook her whole body.

Mr. Jarvis waited. The lights on the terrace, the lights of Monaco, of the aerial towns on the mountains, twinkled and gleamed in the evening air; the great liner was a near-by constellation of mechanical stars, and in the sky above real stars were emerging one by one. Fairyland!

"Now tell me," said Mr. Jarvis.

Madame Duclos gave a shudder and looked searchingly at her companion. "Very well. It can do no harm. I can see your face. It is kind."

She paused and bit her lips.

"I am a thief," she said in low tones. "It was stolen money that I have lost." She paused and the tears began to flow again, but this time quietly.

"You are doing yourself some injustice," asserted Mr. Jarvis stoutly. "Whom have you robbed?"

"My husband.”

"Ah!" breathed Mr. Jarvis, much relieved.

"Wait!" exclaimed Madame Duclos. "You do not understand." She wrung her hands.

"Tell me the whole thing from beginning to end," commanded Mr. Jarvis in firm tones.

"Very well. You must see, though you are a foreigner, that my husband and I come from different walks of life, that we belong to different classes. Ma foi, that is simple to see! He is of the aristocracy, yes, of the noblest; une vieux famille de France! It is not his name that we use. I am not even bourgeoise. I am of the canaille. Yet Georges trusted me.

"We met at the end of the war-in a hospital. He had been gassed so badly it was believed he would die. Then, thanks to God, I nursed him back to life. He lived, but he could never be wholly well. He must stay always in a climate warm and soft, protected from our winter airs. He had no money! All was gone in the war. That is why we dance at a Riviera hotel. For him it is a tragedy, but we must live here and we must work somehow to live. We save every franc-yes, every sou. For three years we have strained every nerve for a single object. We wanted to save enough so we could give up this dancing and buy a tiny place where we could raise flowers for the market. People with even a little capital have been able to do that about here. We had fixed on the place; just outside of Hyères, at the other end of the Riviera. It is the great market in France for violets.

"We had saved fifty thousand francs. We banked it in my name. We needed, to make up our capital, forty thousand francs more. It seemed they would never come. Never! Things have been bad this year. Georges has not been so well. I felt I could not bear to have him going on with this work, this dancing. I have asked him how he could smile over it, and he has said: 'When I had money, ma chérie, I always preferred to buy of a shopkeeper who seemed to like his trade and was happy over it.' He is so sweet! He is so dear! When I became desperate a few days ago, I made up my mind to risk all on one coup: to steal the money we had saved and with it to win here at Monte Carlo what we needed. I was worried about it, yes! It was fear which made me faint last night at the hotel. Yet I never doubted that I would win. I believed in God. It did not seem that God could let me fail. And yet

The young woman paused and a look of unspeakable horror came into her eyes; her hands opened and shut convulsively. Mr. Jarvis waited patiently. "And yet," she went on finally, "I have lost every franc of the money I stole. God has let that happen."

Madame Duclos looked at the sea and Mr. Jarvis looked at Madame Duclos shrewdly. She had lost money. There was no doubt as to that. But was the

rest of the story true? Mr. Jarvis was intimately acquainted with a fair proportion of the vast literature, fact and fiction, dealing with Monte Carlo, and nearly all of it was concerned with blackmailers, cheats, frauds, and spies. There seemed in the young woman before him an intensity which could hardly be assumed, and her words, as she spoke them, rang true. Still, here they were on the terrace of the Monte Carlo Casino, and according to legend nothing that was honest, nothing that was true, nothing good, could happen there.

Deep in thought, he raised his hand to draw out his cigarette-case and in the motion touched his pocketbook, swollen with his recent nefarious gains. In his interest in Madame Duclos he had forgotten all about his own misdemeanors. A smile which was an accurate reflection of Mr. Jarvis's heart, kind with that sort of charity which consists in wholly unconscious love for all mankind, spread over his face.

"What difference does it make to me whether the story is true or not?" he thought. "I am going to make these people happy in their own way. If their own way is an evil one, I cannot help it."

Nevertheless, Mr. Jarvis hesitated before announcing his intended munificence. He was a lonely old man, and in spite of the indifference he proclaimed to himself, he hoped these people who had touched his heart were good. It was the thought that they might be quite the opposite which presently brought the rather woebegone expression to his face.

Suddenly Madame Duclos turned to him. The look of despair had become fixed and set.

"Well, monsieur," she said; "you do not speak. You offered to advise me. You are shocked. You are disgusted."

A wave of shuddering shook her and she wrung her hands again and again.

Mr. Jarvis sat forward in his chair and patted Madame Duclos's shoulder reassuringly. As he studied again the face of the young woman, his doubts and suspicions vanished once and for all, ashamed. There was no misreading the annihilation of self which lay in those agonized, wet, and bewitching blue eyes. Behind the drawn features shone still a