we play. They deal and
shuffle all the cards... and take the stakes. Think not that you have
escaped by fleeing from the mad cities. You with your vine-clad hills,
your sunsets and your sunrises, your homely fare and simple round of
living!

"I've watched you ever since I came. You have not won. You have
surrendered. You have made terms with the enemy. You have made
confession that you are tired. You have flown the white flag of fatigue.
You have nailed up a notice to the effect that life is ebbing down in
you. You have run away from life. You have played a trick, shabby trick.
You have balked at the game. You refuse to play. You have thrown your
cards under the table and run away to hide, here amongst your hills."

He tossed his straight hair back from his flashing eyes, and scarcely
interrupted to roll a long, brown, Mexican cigarette.

"But the gods know. It is an old trick. All the generations of man have
tried it... and lost. The gods know how to deal with such as you. To
pursue is to possess, and to possess is to be sated. And so you, in your
wisdom, have refused any longer to pursue. You have elected surcease.
Very well. You will become sated with surcease. You say you have escaped
satiety! You have merely bartered it for senility. And senility is
another name for satiety. It is satiety's masquerade. Bah!"

"But look at me!" I cried.

Carquinez was ever a demon for haling ones soul out and making rags and
tatters of it.

He looked me witheringly up and down.

"You see no signs," I challenged.

"Decay is insidious," he retorted. "You are rotten ripe."

I laughed and forgave him for his very deviltry. But he refused to be
forgiven.

"Do I not know?" he asked. "The gods always win. I have watched men play
for years what seemed a winning game. In the end they lost."

"Don't you ever make mistakes?" I asked.

He blew many meditative rings of smoke before replying.

"Yes, I was nearly fooled, once. Let me tell you. There was Marvin
Fiske. You remember him? And his Dantesque face and poet's soul, singing
his chant of the flesh, the very priest of Love? And there was Ethel
Baird, whom also you must remember."

"A warm saint," I said.

"That is she! Holy as Love, and sweeter! Just a woman, made for love;
and yet--how shall I say?--drenched through with holiness as your own
air here is with the perfume of flowers. Well, they married. They played
a hand with the gods--"

"And they won, they gloriously w