No one answered him—­all were silent—­as silent as the mute and venerable figure that sat, listening attentively it seemed, in the armchair by the fireplace.

Madison turned abruptly after a moment to Pale Face Harry.

“You, Harry,” he said, laying a hand on the other’s shoulder, “you’re the only one of the four that can walk out of it—­you don’t show in the center of the stage—­you go.  You said the old folks would cry over you—­twenty years is a long time to stay away from the old folks—­I—­I never knew mine.  You go on back to the little farm out there in the West where you said you’d like to go, and—­and give the old people a hand for the years they’ve got left.”

Pale Face Harry shook his head.

“God knows I’d like to,” he said, choking a little; “that’s what I counted on.  God knows I’d like to go out there and lead a decent life—­but I don’t go that way—­I don’t crawl out and leave you—­what’s coming to you is coming to me.”

“That won’t help us any, Harry,” said Madison softly, and his hand tightened in an eloquent pressure on Pale Face Harry’s shoulder.  “You go—­and God bless you!”

Again Pale Face Harry shook his head.

“No,” he said.  “I stick.  If the game’s got you, it’s got me too—­to the limit.  There’s no use talking about that.”

The Flopper licked his lips miserably.

“Swipe me!” he mumbled.  “Hell wasn’t never like dis!  Me an’ Mamie we’ve got it fixed, an’ her old man says he’ll take me inter de store.  Say, Doc, say—­ain’t dere a chanst ter live straight now we wants ter?”

But Madison did not hear the Flopper save in a vague, inconsequential way—­he was looking at Helena.  She had drooped forward a little over the table, her chin in her hands, her lips quivering—­and a white misery in her face seemed to bring a chill, a numbness to his heart.  His Hands clenched, and he began to pace up and down the room.

How buoyantly he had tackled the problem—­buoyant in his own emancipation, buoyant in his love, in the future full of dreams, full of inspiration, full of the new life that Helena and he would live together!  How confidently he had settled himself to undo in a moment the work of months, to outline a mere matter of detail, with never a thought that he was face to face with a problem that he could never solve—­that brought him to the realization that the game, not he, was the master still, iron-handed, implacable—­that though the mental chains were loosed it was but as if, in ironic justice, in grim punishment, only that he might look, clear-visioned, upon the ignominy of the physical shackles he himself had forged and fashioned so readily, whose breaking now was beyond his strength.