“I repeat,” I said, for she had not spoken, “your presence is the most troubling thing I know.  It keeps me back in my studies.”

“There’s a red five for that black six,” she observed.

“Thank you!” and I made the play.

“Then you’re not a Sannyasin yet?”

“I’ve nearly taken the first degree.  Sometimes after hard practice I can succeed in not hating anything for as much as an hour.”

I dealt eight more cards and became, to outward seeming, I hope, absorbed in the new aspect of the game.

“Perseverance will be rewarded,” she said kindly.  “You can’t expect to learn it all at once.”

“You might try not to make it harder for me.”

Again had I been a third person of fair discernment, I believe I should have sworn that I caught in her eyes a gleam of hardened, relentless determination; but she only pointed to a four of hearts which I was neglecting to play up.

“Why not play the game to win?” she asked, and there was that in her voice which was like to undo me—­a tone and the merest fanning of my face by her loose sleeve as she pointed to the card.

Suddenly I knew that honor was not in me.  She walked within my lines in imminent peril of the deadliest character.  But there was no sign of fear in the look she held me with, and I knew she had not sensed her danger.

“You should play your stupid game to win,” she repeated terribly.  “You are too ingenious at finding balm in defeat.”  That little golden roughness in her voice seemed to grate on my bared heart.  I left her eyes with a last desperate appeal to the game.  My hand shook as it laid down the final eight cards.

“Have I ever had any reason to think I could win?” I found I could ask this if I kept my eyes upon the cards.

She laughed a curious, almost silent, confidential little laugh, through which a sigh of despair seemed to breathe.

I looked quickly up, but again there was that strange gleam in her eyes, a gleam of sternest resolve I should have called it under other circumstances.

“You see!” I exclaimed, pointing with a trembling but triumphant finger at the cards.  “You see!  I am beaten now, in this game that seemed easy up to the very last moment.  What could I hope for in a game where the cards fell wretchedly from the very start?  If I hoped now, I’d be a hopeless fool, indeed!”

[Illustration:  “THAT WILL DO,” I SAID SEVERELY.  “REMEMBER, THERE IS A GENTLEMAN PRESENT.”]

“Are you sure you know how to play this game?”

There was a sort of finality in her words that sickened me.

“I have abided always by the rules,” I answered doggedly, “and I do know the rules.  Look—­this game is neatly blocked by one little four-spot on that queen.  If that queen were free, I could finish everything.”

“Oh, oh—­I’ve told you it’s a stupid game with stupid rules—­and it makes its players—­” She did not complete that, but went about on another tack—­with the danger note in her voice.  “Just now I overheard your caller say a thing—­”