“There are two thousand louis in the bank,” he cried.  “Who will take on the bank for two thousand louis?”

No one, however, was willing.  A fresh bank was put up for sale, and Wethermill, still sitting in the dealer’s chair, bought it.  He spoke at once to an attendant, and the man slipped round the table, and, forcing his way through the crowd, carried a message to the girl in the black hat.  She looked towards Wethermill and smiled; and the smile made her face a miracle of tenderness.  Then she disappeared, and in a few moments Ricardo saw a way open in the throng behind the banker, and she appeared again only a yard or two away, just behind Wethermill.  He turned, and taking her hand into his, shook it chidingly.

“I couldn’t let you play against me, Celia,” he said, in English; “my luck’s too good tonight.  So you shall be my partner instead.  I’ll put in the capital and we’ll share the winnings.”

The girl’s face flushed rosily.  Her hand still lay clasped in his.  She made no effort to withdraw it.

“I couldn’t do that,” she exclaimed.

“Why not?” said he.  “See!” and loosening her fingers he took from them the five-louis note and tossed it over to the croupier to be added to his bank.  “Now you can’t help yourself.  We’re partners.”

The girl laughed, and the company at the table smiled, half in sympathy, half with amusement.  A chair was brought for her, and she sat down behind Wethermill, her lips parted, her face joyous with excitement.  But all at once Wethermill’s luck deserted him.  He renewed his bank three times, and had lost the greater part of his winnings when he had dealt the cards through.  He took a fourth bank, and rose from that, too, a loser.

“That’s enough, Celia,” he said.  “Let us go out into the garden; it will be cooler there,”

“I have taken your good luck away,” said the girl remorsefully.  Wethermill put his arm through hers.

“You’ll have to take yourself away before you can do that,” he answered, and the couple walked together out of Ricardo’s hearing.

Ricardo was left to wonder about Celia.  She was just one of those problems which made Aix-les-Bains so unfailingly attractive to him.  She dwelt in some street of Bohemia; so much was clear.  The frankness of her pleasure, of her excitement, and even of her distress proved it.  She passed from one to the other while you could deal a pack of cards.  She was at no pains to wear a mask.  Moreover, she was a young girl of nineteen or twenty, running about those rooms alone, as unembarrassed as if she had been at home.  There was the free use, too, of Christian names.  Certainly she dwelt in Bohemia.  But it seemed to Ricardo that she could pass in any company and yet not be overpassed.  She would look a little more picturesque than most girls of her age, and she was certainly a good deal more soignee than many, and she had the Frenchwoman’s knack of putting on her clothes.  But those would be all