e was watching Zoraida as though his
life itself depended on his reading her wild heart aright.

Slowly, as though he had been half stunned, Bruce rose from the floor.
Once more his face was white and looked sick. He had in his eyes the
startled expression of a man rudely awakened from profound slumber. He
walked with dragging feet across the room and dropped wearily into a
chair. He put his elbows on his knees and his head into his hands.

Zoraida, seeing that Kendric would not come to her, caught up her gown
and leaped lightly down, landing softly like a cat. She put into her
eyes what she pleased, a confusion of messages, a swooning passion, a
maidenly tenderness, a joy that seemed to peep forth shyly. On
tiptoes, as though she would not break the hush of the room, she went
to the hall door, smiling a little in her backward look. A moment she
whispered to the serving man at the door; then she was gone and they
heard only the light patter of her slippers.

The man to whom Zoraida had whispered spoke in an undertone to his
fellows. One of them went out swiftly; the others threw wide the three
doors and then gathered up the fallen gold. It was replaced in its box
and gravely presented to Kendric. He threw back the lid, thrust into
his pocket without counting what he deemed equal to the amount he had
played and tossed the box back to the servant.

"Divide with your friends," he said shortly, and turned toward Betty.
But already, with the doors open, she had sought escape. He saw the
whisk of her skirt and marked the erect carriage of her head of brown
hair as she went out.

Jim Kendric stood looking about him and cursed himself for a fool.
Headlong he had always been, plunging ever into deep waters that were
not over clear, but he could not recall the time he had been a greater
blunderer. He had no more than decided that the one thing for him to
do was to simplify matters than here he went already interfering in
other people's business and making a mess of the whole thing. Betty
adjudged him being desirous of becoming Zoraida's lover; Bruce sought
his death; Rios's eyes were like knives; Barlow still sent his sullen
glances from the box of gold in a servant's hands to the door through
which Zoraida had passed. Kendric went to where Bruce still sat and
put his hand gently on the slack shoulder.

"Bruce, old man----" he said.

But Bruce, though with little spirit in the movement, shook the hand
away.