“No?  It seems to get more and more simple to me.  I’ve been thinking it all over and over again.  I can’t help it!  See here:  I met Sneyd on the steamer, without any introduction.  He sort of warmed into the game in the smoking-room, and he won straight along the trip.  He called on me in London and took me to meet the Countess at her hotel.  We three went to the theatre and lunch and so forth a few times; and when I left for Paris she turned up on the way:  that’s when you met her.  Couple of days later, Sneyd came over, and he and the Countess introduced me to dear ole friend Pedlow.  So you see, I don’t rightly even know who any of ’em really are:  just took ’em for granted, as it were.  We had lots of fun, I admit that, honkin’ about in my car.  We only played cards once, and that was in her apartment the last night before I left Paris, but that one time Pedlow won fifteen thousand francs from me.  When I told them my plans, how I was goin’ to motor down to Rome, she said she would be in Rome—­and, I tell you, I was happy as a poodle-pup about it.  Sneyd said he might be in Rome along about then, and open-hearted ole Pedlow said not to be surprised if he turned up, too.  Well, he did, almost to the minute, and in the meantime she’d got you hooked on, fine and tight.”

“I don’t understand you,” Mellin lifted himself painfully on an elbow.  “I don’t know what you’re getting at, but it seems to me that you’re speaking disrespectfully of an angel that I’ve insulted, and I—­”

“Now see here, Mellin, I’ll tell you something.”  The boy’s white face showed sudden color and there was a catch in his voice.  “I was—­I’ve been mighty near in love with that woman!  But I’ve had a kind of a shock; I’ve got my common-sense back, and I’m not, any more.  I don’t know exactly how much money I had, but it was between thirty-five and thirty-eight thousand francs, and Sneyd won it all after we took off the limit—­over seven thousand dollars—­at her table last night.  Putting two and two together, honestly it looks bad.  It looks mighty bad!  Now, I’m pretty well fixed, and yesterday I didn’t care whether school kept or not, but seven thousand dollars is real money to anybody!  My old man worked pretty hard for his first seven thousand, I guess, and”—­he gulped—­“he’d think a lot of me for lettin’ go of it the way I did last night, wouldn’t he?  You never see things like this till the next morning!  And you remember that other woman sat where she could see every hand you drew, and the Countess—­”

“Stop!” Mellin flung one arm up violently, striking the headboard with his knuckles.  “I won’t hear a syllable against Madame de Vaurigard!” Young Cooley regarded him steadily for a moment.  “Have you remembered yet,” he said slowly, “how much you lost last night?”

“I only remember that I behaved like an unspeakable boor in the presence of the divinest creature that ever—­”