ope you will pardon an
entire stranger for breaking in on you so informally--but--but I
can't--I can't help it. I must tell some one."

Accustomed as she was now to strange confidences, Constance bent over
and patted the little hand of Mrs. Noble comfortingly.

"You seemed to take it so coolly," went on the other woman. "For me the
glamour, the excitement are worse than champagne. But you could stop,
even when you were winning. Oh, my God! What am I to do? What will
happen when my husband finds out what I have done!"

Tearfully, the little woman poured out the sordid story of her
fascination for the game, of her losses, of the pawning of her jewels
to pay her losses and keep them secret, if only for a few days, until
that mythical time when luck would change.

"When I started," she blurted out with a bitter little laugh, "I
thought I'd make a little pin money. That's how I began--with that and
the excitement. And now this is the end."

She had risen and was pacing the floor wildly.

"Mrs. Dunlap," she cried, pausing before Constance, "to-day I am
nothing more nor less than a 'capper,' as they call it, for a gambling
resort."

She was almost hysterical. The contrast with the gay, respectable,
prosperous-looking woman at Bella's was appalling. Constance realized
to the full what were the tragedies that were enacted elsewhere.

As she looked at the despairing woman, she could reconstruct the
terrible situation. Cultivated, well-bred, fashionably gowned, a woman
like Mrs. Noble served admirably the purpose of luring men on. If there
had been only women or only men involved, it perhaps would not have
been so bad. But there were both. Constance saw that men were wanted,
men who could afford to lose not hundreds, but thousands, men who are
always the heaviest players. And so Mrs. Noble and other unfortunate
women no doubt were sent out on Broadway to the cafes and restaurants,
sent out even among those of their own social circle, always to lure
men on, to involve themselves more and more in the web into which they
had flown. Bella had hoped even to use Constance!

Mrs. Noble had paused again. There was evident sincerity in her as she
looked deeply into the eyes of Constance.

Nothing but desperation could have wrung her inmost secrets from her to
another woman.

"I saw them trying to throw you together with Haddon Halsey," she said,
almost tragically. "It was I who introduced Haddon to them. I was to
get a percen