The croupiers had completed the payments of the last coup.  The marble fell with its sharp click and whizzed and rattled around the disc.  Zora held her breath.  The marble found its compartment at last, and the croupier announced: 

"Dix-sept, noir, impair et manque."

She had won.  A sigh of relief shook her bosom.  Not only had she not lost a stranger’s money, but she had won for him thirty-five times his stake.  She watched the louis greedily lest it should be swept away by a careless croupier—­perhaps the only impossible thing that could not happen at Monte Carlo—­and stretched out her arm past the bland old lady in tense determination to frustrate further felonious proceedings.  The croupier pitched seven large gold coins across the table.  She clutched them feverishly and turned to deliver them to their owner.  He was nowhere to be seen.  She broke through the ring, and with her hands full of gold scanned the room in dismayed perplexity.

At last she espied him standing dejectedly by another table.  She rushed across the intervening space and held out the money.

“See, you have won!”

“Oh, Lord!” murmured the man, removing his hands from his dinner-jacket pockets, but not offering to take his winnings.  “What a lot of trouble I have given you.”

“Of course you have,” she said tartly.  “Why didn’t you stay?”

“I don’t know,” he replied.  “How can one tell why one doesn’t do things?”

“Well, please take the money now and let me get rid of it.  There are seven pieces of five louis each.”

She counted the coins into his hand, and then suddenly flushed scarlet.  She had forgotten to claim the original louis which she had staked.  Where was it?  What had become of it?  As well try, she thought, to fish up a coin thrown into the sea.  She felt like a thief.

“There ought to be another louis,” she stammered.

“It doesn’t matter,” said the man.

“But it does matter.  You might think that I—­I kept it.”

“That’s too absurd,” he answered.  “Are you interested in guns?”

“Guns?”

She stared at him.  He appeared quite sane.

“I remember now I was thinking of guns when I went away,” he explained.  “They’re interesting things to think about.”

“But don’t you understand that I owe you a louis?  I forgot all about it.  If my purse weren’t empty I would repay you.  Will you stay here till I can get some money from my hotel—­the Hotel de Paris?”

She spoke with some vehemence.  How could the creature expect her to remain in his debt?  But the creature only passed his fingers through his upstanding hair and smiled wanly.

“Please don’t say anything more about it.  It distresses me.  The croupiers don’t return the stake, as a general rule, unless you ask for it.  They assume you want to back your luck.  Perhaps it has won again.  For goodness’ sake don’t bother about it—­and thank you very, very much.”