and emphasize the silence, like echoes in a cave: a faint
rattle of rakes, like the rustle of leaves, and a delicate chink-chink
of gold, like the chirping of young birds just awakened by dawn.

A voice at each table as she drew near or passed made some announcement.
She caught the words distinctly yet not loudly pronounced: "Faites vos
jeux, messieurs.... Rien n'va plus. Onze, noir, impair et manque."

"_Onze_" was one of the numbers the French couple had decided to play.
Mary wondered if it had come at their bidding, and she wished intensely
to see what was going on at the tables inside those close circles of
women's hats and men's shoulders. But to see, meant to push. She was not
bold enough to do that, and kept moving on observantly, hoping always to
discover some island less populous than others.

Now she began to pick individuals out of the crowd. The number of types
seemed countless. It was as if each country on earth had been called
upon to contribute as many as it could spare of unusual and striking,
even astonishing, specimens of humanity, on purpose to provide eccentric
or ornamental features of this strange, world's variety show.

There were some lovely, and a few singularly beautiful, women from
northern and southern lands. Peter had said that one could "tell
Americans by their chins," which were firmer and more expressive of
energy than other chins, and Englishwomen by their straight noses, which
looked as if they had been handed down as precious heirlooms from
aristocratic ancestresses. The mellow light gilded many such chins and
such noses, and shone into soft dark eyes such as only the Latin races
have. Mary fancied she could tell French from Italian women, Spanish
from Austrian, Hungarian from Russian or German types. Almost invariably
the pretty women and the good-looking men were well dressed. Only the
plain and ugly ones seemed not to care for appearances. But there were
more plain people than handsome ones; and dowdy forms strove jealously
to hide the charming figures, as dark clouds swallow up shining stars.
All faces, however, no matter how beautiful or how repulsive, how old or
how young, had a strange family likeness in their expression, it seemed
to Mary; a tense eagerness, such as before her novitiate she had seen on
the faces of Lady MacMillan's guests sometimes when they had settled
down seriously to play bridge.

She had expected to see unhappy and wildly excited faces, because, Peter