made her knees
feel very weak, after she had stood for perhaps half an hour. Looking
round, she noticed that there were a good many brown leather-covered
seats along the mirrored and gilded walls. Most of these were fully
occupied by resting men and women, some very old and tired looking,
others eagerly counting money, or jotting down notes in little books or
on cards. As she looked, an extraordinary woman much bejewelled, with a
face a century old under bright red hair, and a hat for a lovely young
girl, jumped abruptly up from the seat nearest Mary, and almost ran to
one of the tables, where she flung herself into the crowd, like a diver
into a wave. Her place on the bench was left empty, and Mary took it, to
follow the example of others and count her money while resting.

Sitting down, she had on one side a young and pretty woman in a charming
dress and hat, more suitable for a past June than a present December,
even a Riviera December. Her face, too, which she turned with a gaze of
interest on Mary and her costume, was slightly, pathetically faded, like
the petals of a white rose gathered while in bud and pressed between the
pages of a book. She was like a charming wax doll which had lost its
colour by being placed too near a warm fire.

On the other side was a very old man, gray as a ghost, who showed no
sign of knowing that he had a new neighbour. Everything about him was
gray: his thin, concave face, his expressionless eyes, his sparse hair
and straggling moustache, his clothes, and his hands, knotted on the
back like the roots of trees. His grayness and the bleak remoteness of
his air made him seem unreal as a spirit come back to haunt the scene of
long-ago triumphs or defeats. Mary could almost have persuaded herself
that he did not exist, and that the pale form and glassy eyes were
visible to her alone.

She took her purse from a bag of gold and silver beads she had bought in
the Galerie Charles Trois, and counted her money. She had a little more
than five hundred francs, and wondered what could be done with that sum
at roulette. Even the sound of tinkling gold and silver did not attract
the dead gray eyes to Mary; but perhaps it broke some dreary dream, for
the old man got up stiffly as if in protest, and walked away with the
gait of an automaton.

"Heaven be praised!" murmured in French the weary white rose on Mary's
other side; "he brings bad luck. But perhaps he will take it away with
him."

Mary re